Growing numbers of businesses and individuals are now taking significant steps to become leaner and greener by reducing their carbon footprints. But few institutions are working as hard as our higher education colleges to maximize efficiencies and invest in sustainability, despite tighter budgets dictated by the continuing economic turmoil.
A recent article in the Huffington Post highlighted five ways in which colleges are shrinking their carbon footprints and implementing sustainable practices. These actions for change were identified as: adopting solar powered trash cans that automatically compress trash, maximizing the efforts of maintenance crews; adopting alternate energy sources such as biofuels made of oat hulls or biogas from manure; going ‘trayless’ at dining centers to reduce food waste; composting any organic food that is still wasted; and rolling out tough rules and green governing policies across campuses to maintain recycling programs and ethical procurement.
At The Refinishing Touch we have been supporting universities and colleges in their sustainability efforts for over 35 years, helping them lower their carbon footprints and slash their budgets by up to 80 percent through environmentally-friendly on campus furniture refinishing and reupholstery services.
To date we have run successful refinishing and carbon reduction projects at more than 50 universities and colleges across 24 states, and we look forward to further educational projects throughout 2012 and beyond. By saving perfectly good furniture and décor from landfill, we directly help education institutes and their students to promote reuse over rebuy, maximize all their carbon reduction efforts, and demonstrate the impact of good sustainable practices.