Science and Technology of New York City

Creighton, Sarah Hammond. Greening the Ivory Tower: Improving the Environmental Track Record of Universities, Colleges and Other Institutions. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 1998. Print.

Actually I got this book as an ebook through the Brooklyn College library but I am not too sure how to cite that properly.

I have only made a quick skim of the book but it certainly should be one of our sources. It is written by the manager of Tufts CLEAN! an organization made to limit the environmental impact of Tufts University. It of course focuses on Tufts University but argues that the experience can and should be copied elsewhere. As such it is necessarily bit biased and triumphant. Nevertheless, this is an extraordinarily important book. Firstly, it is almost 15 years old and describes events 2o years old, which shows more or less the age of the start of the university trend toward going green. Secondly, it gives a very hands on approach and practical approach toward achieving sustainability (at least the  environmental variant) by moving the focus to not only student or faculty initiatives but also to staff, who make administrative decisions about what type of trays are used in the cafeteria and what type of heating the university uses. For our group, it is very important to understand the bureaucratic workings of Brooklyn College, who decides what and why. The book also has many figures and issues that we might like to pursue. For example, for many students use the cafeteria at the college and how much electricity it uses, not to mention the total CO2 emissions.

The book argues that there are five general points that can help achieve environment action. They can summed up as understanding how the institution works coupled with a working counsel or some other form of administrative body dedicated to the change led by prominent individuals and an understanding of how environment protection works in general. In Brooklyn College, we have most of these points down, except the aforementioned bureaucratic question.