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New Green Book Helps Students Live Sustainably at Duke

A student-led project creates a guide to green living on campus

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The Green Book is a new guide to green living on campus for first year-students

First-year students in Duke's Class of 2015 are learning how to live green on campus before they even arrive.

All first-year students have received a link to the new Green Book, a guide to living in an eco-friendly way at Duke.

Many of the first-year students will also receive a hard copy of the book, printed on recycled paper, as they are distributed by students during Orientation Welcome Week.

Allison Donnelly is a rising sophomore at Duke and the leader of the project to create the Green Book, which was an effort of the undergraduate environmental group, the Environmental Alliance.

"The first few weeks of college can be overwhelming, so we wanted to make it easy to live green at Duke right from the start," said Donnelly, speaking of her inspiration for the project.

Students will find information about dining, recycling, alternative transportation, and other aspects of green living. The Green Book also provides information that is useful to students before they arrive on campus, such as a shopping list for a green dorm room and ways to get around Duke and Durham without bringing a car to campus.

According to Donnelly, "Students don't always hear about all the ways they can live green and get involved in sustainability on campus.  The Green Book gives them all of that information in one place."

The students who created the Green Book collaborated with campus offices like Sustainable Duke, Duke Recycles, and Duke Parking and Transportation to develop a comprehensive guide to sustainability resources on campus.

"If students can start making these simple environmental choices in their first few weeks of college, they will carry these habits with them throughout their years at Duke and beyond," said Donnelly.

An electronic version of the Green Book is accessible on the Sustainable Duke website.