News and Updates
- ConnectEDU Green Paper
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Posted by ConnectEDU on September 25, 2008
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Learn why Green Admissions is important to today's students and how you can get started More
- Sustainable Design School
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Posted by Jay on August 28, 2008
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Yestermorrow Design/Build School offers over 100 hands-on courses per year in design, construction, woodworking, and architectural craft and offers a variety of courses concentrating in sustainable design. More
The Problem
What if we told you that the college application process is contributing to global warming? Think about it: what do all students use in order to complete their applications? Paper. A lot of paper. On average high schools in the United States waste an estimated 46,920 pieces of paper. This means that more than 750 million pieces of paper are wasted every year on the college admissions process. If you prefer visuals over numbers, picture this: if you were to line up all this wasted paper, you'd have enough to circle the earth 5 times. Nearly 10,000 trees are sacrificed each year to produce this much paper.
We are raising awareness about the environmental damage that results from the college application process. With this site, we are promoting alternative processes for college admissions that remove paper from the equation.
About the Petition
Over 200 colleges in the United States have started down the path towards a paperless admissions process, but there's much more work to be done. Sign our petition and choose the schools that you'd like to see go green. We'll contact those schools and show them how they can adopt a paperless admissions process. In addition, we will plant a tree for every high school or college that takes steps towards a greener admissions process in response to your petition.
The Facts
- Each student wastes an estimated 400 pieces of paper during the college admissions process.
- Each high school wastes an estimated 46,920 pieces of paper each year.
- Colleges in the US waste an estimated 755,760,054 pieces of paper each year.
- If the amount of paper used every year was lined up it could circle the earth 5 times.
- 253,476 square meters of forest are cleared every admissions cycle to produce all the paper used.
Please join us in supporting the Nature Conservancy. We are setting out to plant 9,388 trees, as that is how many trees are cut down each to produce the paper that is used on the college admissions process.