Almost exactly one year ago, ClimateEdu's premiere issue included a story about several Utah organizations and universities that switched to a four-day workweek schedule on a trial basis, hoping to reduce GHG emissions and provide an extra benefit to employees. One year later, they have released their findings, and so far the program seems to be working.

A Scientific American article examines the results, noting that the state projects a 12,000 metric ton reduction in carbon emissions from commuting and building electricity use annually, and $1.8 million in savings from utility bills as of May, 2009.

In our original story from August 2008, we reported that "Not only is this change likely to keep a few more cars off the road in a state that has weak public transit infrastructure, it is also expected to save a significant amount of building-generated emissions by turning off most of the lights, heat, and air-conditioning in almost 1,000 non-essential government buildings every Friday. Preliminary reports estimate that shutting down six sample buildings for an extra day would lead to an annual CO2 reduction of more than 3,300 tons per year, and this number is likely to go up depending on which additional buildings are selected."

Although the $1.8 million that Utah has saved on utilities so far is shy of their original estimate ($3 billion), which may be partly due to lowering energy costs, the carbon dioxide emissions savings seem to be higher than officials planned. And employee morale is also higher, according to the Scientific American story. "'People just love it,' says Lori Wadsworth, a professor of public management at Brigham Young University in Provo. She helped survey those on the new Working 4 Utah schedule this May and found 82 percent would prefer to stick with it." Other research shows that employees are not fatigued by the new schedule, show less stress, and are taking fewer sick days. Anecdotal evidence even suggests that volunteerism is up, though it's not clear if that shift can be attributed to the change in work schedules or a general trend.

Other universities are experimenting with flexible schedules, such as Georgetown, Cornell, and the University of New Mexico, with mixed results. Not all regions will be able to save energy in their buildings this way, and tracking the amount of emissions saved can also be difficult, particularly when it comes to including commuting emissions in a climate action plan.

However, managers and legislators seem to feel it's worth a try. "As we move further into the 21st century, governments need to look for ways to become more efficient," says Michael N. Gianaris, a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly. "Moving to a four-day workweek should be at the top of the list. It helps the environment. People like it. It's a no-brainer."

Our latest issue is live. Here are today's headlines:

Is There Room for Sustainability in Every Classroom?
Faculty are finding new ways to incorporate issues of ecology, natural resources, social justice and human behavior into their classes, even those not in the environmental sciences.

Overcoming Solar's Challenges with a New Technology
A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invented a cheaper method for harnessing solar energy, using a tinted dye that could efficiently absorb and spread energy across the surface of glass panes.

Students Follow the Yellow Bike Road
After a few false starts, bike-sharing programs are springing up in cities and on college campuses around the world, with each finding its own way to get people out of cars for the forty percent of trips in the United States that are less than two miles long.

ClimateEdu, published by National Wildlife Federation's Campus Ecology program, offers news, resources, events, and opportunities for climate leadership on campus. To subscribe to our twice-monthly e-newsletter or browse our archives, visit the homepage: ClimateEdu: News for the Green Campus.

Our latest issue is live. Here are today's headlines:

Youth Activists Making Their Voices Heard at Climate Talks
Joann Klimkiewicz
At climate talks in Poznan, young delegates from across the world added their voices to the debate, demanding that the global dialogue be refocused on the survival of civilizations and ecosystems.

Hydrogen: Just a Lot of Hot Gas?
Paul Tolme
Humboldt State’s new hydrogen-powered car and fueling station are part of a university-led effort to wean America off gasoline. But is hydrogen the fuel of tomorrow or yesterday’s hype? ClimateEdu goes for a ride to find out.

Service Learning Takes a Climate Approach
Courtney Cochran
A Warren Wilson College project addresses a climate challenge that lies beyond campus, taking advantage of the school's work program and service learning components to help local residents energy-proof their homes.

PERSPECTIVE: Recession is the Mother of Invention
Rachel Barge
As legislators make hard cuts to their budgets, education administrators hunker down on campus spending, particularly when it comes to so-called “luxury” sustainability programs. To compensate, student organizers and campus sustainability professionals are turning to new funding sources to implement vital campus sustainability initiatives.

ClimateEdu, published by National Wildlife Federation's Campus Ecology program, offers news, best practice analysis, events, resources, and opportunities for climate leadership on campus. To subscribe to our twice-monthly e-newsletter or read our archives, visit the homepage: ClimateEdu: News for the Green Campus.

Bikes on campus are nothing new, particularly to cash-strapped students. But when a university invests in bike rental programs, increased riding and parking infrastructure, and the physical and environmental health of its campus, it's much bigger news.

USA Today's profile covers several colleges, including Ripon College in Wisconsin, Auburn University in Alabama, and SUNY-Albany, that are launching programs designed to get students and staff out of their cars. Projects include bike-loans, bike maintenance shops on campus, biking and walking paths, and freshman pledges to leave the car behind in exchange for a free bike from the university.

Image credit: Eckerd College

My parents were not real hippies. My mother never burned her bra, and my father never torched his draft card. They did not smoke pot, hitchhike, or go to Woodstock. They did, however, listen to Simon and Garfunkel. A lot. And there were a lot of significant events going on when my parents were growing up that shaped and defined their (and our) country. They saw the civil rights movement unfold, knew people fighting in the Vietnam War, and watched Watergate unravel a presidency. My parent’s generation also pioneered the environmental movement. They organized the first Earth Day and went on to found companies like Patagonia and Whole Foods. The visionaries of the sixties reshaped the way we think about our relationship with the Earth.

Growing up, my parents taught my sisters and me the importance of recycling. Coffee grounds and egg shells were always set aside for the compost pile, and in the summer dinner included tomatoes, rhubarb, or zucchini from our garden. Our family vacations were often taken in state or national parks and we always slept in tents. My parents not only understood the beauty of nature but they passed their love of the outdoors on to their children.

And recently, my parents did something huge to help fight global warming. They just bought a Toyota Prius and they are not alone - the typical Prius driver is over 50! Hybrids like the Prius use a duel combustion/electric engine, which means the vehicle can shut down the combustion engine that needs gasoline to run at low speeds or when the car is idling. The Prius is the most fuel efficient vehicle sold in the US, getting on average over 46 mpg.

Not everyone can afford to buy a hybrid car. But we can all put pressure on the auto industry to raise fuel efficiency standards. And there are many other ways we can individually reduce our impact on the world. NWF’s Campus Ecology members are constantly embracing new technologies to aid in the fight. From BallStateUniversity’s tireless efforts to bring bio-fueled hybrid buses to campus, to 2006 Campus Ecology Fellow Scot Miller’s online interactive guide to all of the environmentally friendly companies on and around Harvard, students today are making a difference. All of us can impact the world around us. For ideas on what you can do, check out our website and get involved today!

Skateboarding isn’t just for teenagers and college students anymore. More and more people are beginning to take up the sport – for fun, and to simply save money on gas. Skateboarding is an easy way to get around and it's clean -- no dirty emissions. And Comet Skateboards is taking skateboarding one step further to being environmentally friendly. Comet uses ecologically sustainable materials such as carbon fiber, water-based paints, and harvested bamboo to manufacture its products and some of its machinery is powered by solar energy. Comet is also in the process of building a sustainable skateboard park in Oakland, California.

College and university campuses also provide alternative transportation options for students, faculty, and staff from bicycle programs to campus shuttle buses. Ball State University in Indiana has a hybrid-electric bus that shuttles more than 19,000 students around campus, Eckerd College in Florida established a “Yellow Bikes” program, making bikes available to the campus community, and the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry built a solar-powered watercraft.

We have all heard it a million times: EXERCISE IS GOOD FOR YOU!

But exercising can be good for the environment too. How many times a week do you hop in your car to drive a mile or two down the road to grab one thing at the grocery store? Or what about running to the ATM? Or to a friend’s house? According to the EPA, 40% of all personal trips are 2 miles or under! Instead of getting into a car, why not walk, run, or ride a bike?

Every gallon of gas consumed releases 19.4 pounds of CO2. If you replaced just two miles of driving a day with biking or walking you could save about three gallons of gas a month. That comes out to about 60 pounds of carbon a month!

Not only can you save on carbon emissions, but on calories as well. On average, 100 calories are burnt every mile walked (varying slightly from person to person). According to the EPA those who exercised regularly had 14% fewer claims to their health insurance than those who did not exercise.

By replacing short car trips with biking or walking, some of the benefits include:

• No release of carbon emissions
• Money saved on gas, health care costs, and vehicle maintenance
• Added time and enjoyment of being outdoors
• Physical fitness
• Decreased amount of time wasted and stress caused by traffic

Many college campuses have taken initiative and established bike programs on campus to decrease traffic congestion and carbon emissions. Check out our fellows, Alex Pocock, Ryan Campbell, and Anita Yip, to learn about bicycle programs on their campuses. 

Will Toor and Spencer Havlick’s book, Transportation and Sustainable Campus Communities (2004), is a vital resource for anyone interested in how campuses can reduce congestion related to cars on campuses and in surrounding communities while saving money and preventing global warming and other forms of pollution. The resource is held in such esteem by decision-makers that, last October, members of the City Council of College Park, Maryland who are concerned about how best to manage university-related growth and congestion issues purchased a copy for each member after a presentation by NWF staff on how campuses and communities all across the country are working together to improve the public health. Incidentally, the University of Maryland, according to the authors, has already begun to implement a number of strategies to reduce congestion and the demand for new parking, such as charging 75 percent less for carpool permits than for drive-alone permits (p. 7).

Universities are moving toward a new vision that encompasses better bicycle and pedestrian facilities, expanded access to transit and financial incentives to drive less, observe Toor and Havlick. With chapters on campus transit, nonmotorized transport and campus fleets, their book makes a strong, well-documented economic case for sustainable transportation policies on campus . “Because parking has not typically been priced at the true marginal cost of new parking supply,” the authors note, “good economic analysis of transportation options for university communities will generally show that an economically efficient transportation policy will rely less on parking and more on transportation alternatives compared to most universities’ current practice (p. 282).”

Campuses featured in the book's in-depth case studies include the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of British Columbia, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Montana at Missoula, Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire along with shorter references to almost 200 other college and university programs of various types and sizes.

Transportation demand management strategies considerably reduce campus carbon dioxide emissions. At the University of Washington, for example, alternative transportation plans enabled the campus to grow while reducing the anticipated growth in the number of cars driving to and from the campus by 10,000 vehicles per day. At 20 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted for every gallon of gasoline that would have been burned by those vehicles, the CO2 emissions reductions for just this one project on one campus alone could be well over 100,000 pounds of CO2 per day (assuming the cars would have used half a gallon per day on average which is probably a low estimate).

The book is published by and can be ordered through Island Press.

Also consulted by campus transportation planners are NWF publications Ecodemia (1995) and Green Investment, Green Return (1998) which can both be ordered through NWF's Campus Ecology Program. See also “projects” in the left-hand column of the website and click on “transportation” to find case studies on a variety of current transportation-related projects coordinated by member Campus Ecology teams and fellows.