Green campus which stands for a higher education community that is improving energy efficiency, conserving resources and enhancing environmental quality by educating for sustainability and creating healthy living and learning environments.

    A green campus demonstrates its commitment to ecological sustainability through its academic programs, its research, its campus life, and its physical operations. Academic Programs.

    On January 1, 1970, the US President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), beginning the 1970s as the environmental decade. NEPA created the Council on Environmental Quality which oversaw the environmental impact of federal actions. Later in the year, Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which consolidated environmental programs from other agencies into a single entity. The legislation during this period concerned primarily first-generation pollutants in the air, surface water, groundwater, and solid waste disposal. Air pollutants such as particulates, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ozone were put under regulation, and issues such as acid rain,visibility, and global warming were also concerns. In surface water, the contaminants of concern were dissolved oxygen,bacteria, suspended and dissolved solids, nutrients, and toxic substances such as metals. For groundwater, the pollutants included biological contaminants, inorganic and organic substances, and radionuclides. Finally, solid waste contaminants from agriculture, industry, mining, municipalities, and others were put under control.

    Part of the process of living an eco lifestyle includes knowing how to make the right motions to turn your college campus into a green campus, and how to sustain those efforts with future students and staff. It’s not an easy process, but there are many universities out there that are already contributing to the green college effort.