The University of Colorado at Boulder has been named one of the top 15 campuses in the nation for sustainability by the Sustainable Endowments Institute.
The College Sustainability Report Card is considered the most credible and respected national ranking of its kind because it is the only independent sustainability evaluation of campus operations and endowment investments. Among the schools included in the foundation's 2009 top 15 list are Brown University, Columbia University, Harvard University and Stanford University.
Although the top 15 schools on the College Sustainability Report Card 2009 are not ranked, CU-Boulder has the most "A" grades (in seven of eight categories) of any other large university on the list. Only Middlebury College and Oberlin College had equivalent grades.
"The University of Colorado at Boulder has long been a leader in sustainability and environmental responsibility," said CU-Boulder Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson. "The ranking of our campus by the Rockefeller Foundation as one of the top schools in the nation for sustainability is further evidence of the national leadership position we have in this arena."
Dave Newport, director of the CU-Boulder Environmental Center, said the ranking is the result of "decades of student, faculty and administration leadership."
"This didn't happen overnight," said Newport. "Going forward we must translate that legacy of leadership into an innovative and credible path to the next level -- carbon neutrality -- and a practical plan for a sustainable future."
CU-Boulder's overall grade in the College Sustainability Report Card (an A-) improved an entire letter grade from the 2008 report due, in part, to innovations like the "zero-waste football program" and the nation's first investment in "local offsets" as a means of cutting carbon emissions.
CU-Boulder received the highest grade of any Colorado campus. Colorado College received a "B," while Colorado State University and Denver University both received a "B-."
The College Sustainability Report Card is published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute, a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. It assessed 300 public and private colleges and universities with the largest endowments.
CU-Boulder has a long history of groundbreaking environmental efforts starting in 1970 with the establishment of the student-led Environmental Center on Earth Day -- six months before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was founded. In 1976 CU-Boulder students created the first recycling program on a college campus.
In 2000 CU-Boulder students set another national precedent by voting to purchase renewable wind-energy credits to match power used in its four LEED-certified buildings. Earlier this year, CU-Boulder was the first statewide entity to offset its greenhouse gas emissions with the Colorado Carbon Fund, a program of the Governor's Energy Office.