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Making the Eco Grade: UCLA 9th Greenest School on Annual List

UCLA_RoyceHall_sky.jpg
UCLA's Royce Hall. Photo by neonspecs via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

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Local ecoblogger GreenLAGirl reports that Sierra magazine has published their annual list of the 10 colleges in the country that rank as the greenest, and our UCLA makes the cut at a respectable #9. However, at 60%, the campus' recycling rate is actually lower than the City of Los Angeles overall, who can boast we have "the highest recycling rate out of the 10 largest U.S. cities," at 65%.Suggests GreenLAGirl: "Bruins — Recycle at least as much as the average Angeleno!"

Other local campus powerhouse USC "didn’t even make the list of the top 135," and the absolute greenest of the bunch got an A+ grade of 100 and is the Univesity of Colorado at Boulder; UC Santa Cruz & Berkeley also ranked in the top 10. California schools represent fairly well in the list, although even with a ranking of 86 the LA Community College district only earned a C- grade. How green a school is may impact who opts to attend, according to Sierra. "Today, two-thirds of university applicants say that a school's environmental report card would influence whether they'd enroll."

Of course, paying for higher education in California is a whole other issue...

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