College: the best years of your life. You’re grasping independence, living away from home, learning, and exploring life. You’re also consuming energy, and I don’t mean calories, I mean kilowatts.
Living on a college campus, it’s easy to be consumed by the ever-popular green media, but it’s also a critical time to be concerned about your own consumption habits, as you prepare for your life after college. According to the U.S. Department of Education, in 2007 approximately 11 million students were enrolled full-time in universities in the US, most living in dorms, apartments, rental houses and condos. Going from living in a dorm or place with all-inclusive rent to paying utilities can be a huge shock because most students don’t even realize how much energy and water they use, let alone the waste that they discard.
Typical tips like:
1. Turn off the water while you brush your teeth.
2. Turn off lights when you’re not in your room.
3. Don’t leave the TV on when no one’s watching it.
are great, but we’ve all heard them.
Sometimes when you are living in the dorms or you don’t own your own home it’s hard to know what you can and can’t do to conserve energy. The idea is not to feel hopeless but rather heartened in a great understanding of the things that you can easily do every day. Hopefully some of the following hints will turn you shades of green and give life to your campus.
This really is a vital issue. Climate change, whether you believe it or not, is real, and you're a part of it. Those approximately 11 million students attending college, at the per capita rate of 19.78 tons of carbon, will emit 891,682,400 tons of carbon (the leading greenhouse gas) over the four years at college (Energy Information Administration). Every little bit of energy conserved can only reduce that number. The whole earth may not be in your hands, but every bit of energy used leaves an imprint.
As college students, hopefully you're up to a challenge: consume less to create more. Create more with the energy that we do have, create more awareness, create more connections with the earth- be creative.
Maybe you can even learn to knit in your spare time...
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Great website! I like all your links on the sidebar, your use of humor in titling and all in all your informative tone and humor! I thought it was great and neatly organized. However, I think you have way too much information for someone to keep their attention on longer than say, 30 minutes. I like your persuasion, information and entertainment. I think it is a coherent draft and is written nicely.
ReplyDeleteGood work!
agreed. good site. good info. and the format is nice.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your website. The layout is really easy to follow, and i like the notes tagged on the side for if you were looking for something specific.
ReplyDeleteYou also had a lot of good information that was really relevant. It was clear you did your research on the topic.
Good use of media. You had lots of good pictures, and I really liked the video of the earth unraveling. Very nice!
Overall very good site. I really like the way you set it up with the sidebar. It was very helpful in what you can do to reduce your carbon footprint. Perhaps beware of phrases like "save the world." Is buying Energy Star appliances really going to save the environment? It has a good flow, and I like the creative titles that you use. Maybe putting a little more media in the way of cartoons or funny movies would help keep the attention of the reader. Overall, a very nicely done website.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great model that definitely has the presence of the three elements for the project. A good start by going past the typical advice and expounding on ways we can start helping now, even within our current college lifestyles. The links on the side are a great resource to lots of outside information to back your sentiments. I would check out the one visual that doesn't seem to load and you're off to a great start.
ReplyDelete