The Greener Side of Dorm Life

This guest post is contributed by Angelita Williams, who writes on the topics of online college courses. She welcomes your comments: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Living in a dorm is an exciting aspect of the collegiate experience. You'll be learning how to share a usually restricted space with one or more roommates, thus immersing yourself in the joys and challenges of communal living. The best part, however, is that now that you are living in your own space beyond the confines of your family home, you can make some substantive changes to the way you live such that you have a positive impact on the environment. Here are a few tips for living a greener lifestyle in student housing.

1. Buy locally, buy used.
Want to reduce your carbon footprint before even moving into your dorm? Instead of purchasing all the furniture and other living items you'll need at home, and then lugging it with you on the way to college, effectively increasing the need for transportation, buy all the items you'll need in the town or city in which your university is located. Also, consider purchasing used furniture from venues like Craiglist. There are also websites like Freecycle where you can get dorm room necessities from collections of stuff that people living in your area no longer want.

2. Change out light bulbs.

Dorm rooms may sometimes come equipped with light bulbs that use more energy than necessary. A typical dorm light fixture is the torchiere lamp, which usually uses a wasteful halogen bulb. Here's a quick way to convert your standard 300 watt halogen to a more energy efficient 20 watt CFL.

3. Invest in a drier rack.
Communal laundry rooms are always a pain to deal with anyway. Clothes go missing more often than you think they would. Why not skip the whole ordeal and dry clothes in your own room?

4. Buy a Brita filter and drink from the tap.
Staying hydrated is especially important to combat all the stresses of college life. But instead of buying bottled water with all that manufactured plastic, drink from the tap. It's cheaper, and tap water can taste just as good as bottled with a filter anyway.

5. Recycle and reuse
Most dorms have recycling programs, but in case they don't, talk to your peers and RAs to help set one up. So many products that students typically use end up at landfills, polluting the soil and the air. Items that come to mind are batteries, ink cartridges, glass bottles, paper, and grocery bags. Many of these items, like grocery bags, can be reused over and over again before even taking them to a recycling center.

6. Reduce food waste by skipping trays at the cafeteria.
Many student dining halls are going trayless, but if your school still uses them, pass them up to ensure that you take only what you can fit on a plate. It'll help you avoid the proverbial Freshman 15 weight gain, and you'll more than likely throw out less.
 

7. Participate in or set up a campus community garden.
Community gardens are a great way to bond with student peers, meet new people, and consume food locally that's grown without harmful pesticides. What's more, nothing beats the feeling of eating something that you helped grow yourself.

These are just a few simple ways you can make living on-campus an experience that sets you up to live a more sustainable lifestyle, both now and in the future. For more ways in which students across the nation are "going green", check out this U.S. News and World Report article.