When you think of the University New Hampshire, what do you think of? The popular Whittemore School of Business? The Engineering program? Wildcat hockey? The Dairy Bar? What if you’re an aspiring environmentalist? If so, UNH  definitely has something for you too!

UNH has recently been recognized in several rankings as a leading institution promoting environmental consciousness. Both the Princeton Review and greenreportcard.org gave UNH the highest possible score in their rankings. The third ranking came from the Sierra Club in which UNH ranked 12th out of 135 schools in terms of its “eco-friendliness.”

The schools were judged on a variety of items in each of the different surveys, but for the most part, the surveys looked at similar criteria. Some criteria included: administration, green building, waste management, investment priorities, food, and transportation.

According to UNH’s Office of Sustainability, UNH is “committed to having all new campus construction and major renovation projects achieve U.S. Green Building Council Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver standards or equivalent; this policy will be applicable to all new projects initiated after UNH design and construction building standards have been modified in 2008.” http://www.sustainableunh.unh.edu/climate_ed/sustainablebuildings.html

Also, UNH recently completed work on its new EcoLine, “a landfill gas-to-energy project that uses purified methane gas from a nearby landfill to power the campus. The five million square-foot campus will receive up to 85 percent of its electricity and heat from purified natural gas, making UNH the first university in the nation to use landfill gas as its primary fuel source.” http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/UNHLandfillProject/37840/

These are just two of the ways UNH is setting a precedent for college sustainability. If environmental studies are your thing, check out what’s going on at your state’s flagship university!

Be a LEEDer,

Rich