News and Updates
- Higher Learning Adapts To a Greening Attitude
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Posted by C. Gimbel on June 24, 2008
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"The environmental fervor sweeping college campuses has reached beyond the push to recycle plastics and offer organic food and is transforming the curriculum, permeating classrooms, academic majors and expensive new research institutes." More
- Do Americans Know How to Go Green?
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Posted by Courtney on June 20, 2008
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A recent survey suggests that while Americans are eco-conscious, they are unsure how to take the first steps towards a greener lifestyle. More
- Paper Trail
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Posted by Courtney on June 20, 2008
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Check out what Charleston.net had to say about Students Plant The Seed. Please remind your friends to sign the petition! 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.