Green 101

Forget about Animal House. Students living in Oberlin College's Student Experiment in Ecology Design (SEED) house are substituting all-night keggers for three minute showers and late night runs to Taco Bell for a communal refrigerator.The students living in the green house are not just self-affirmed tree-huggers. In fact, when the house's founders were looking for students to fill the bunks, they searched for students who had little to no environmental experience. In addition to the short showers, residents are also fanatics about keeping electricity use to a minimum. They shut off lights in unused rooms and study together in the living room. And—gasp!—there is no television. The students are serious about their goals, and they hope their unique living situation will inspire other people

"It's not about telling people, 'You have to do this, you have to do that,' " one student said. "It's about fitting sustainability into our own lives." And hoping, he added, "that a friend will come over, recognize that it's fun, start doing it, and then a friend of theirs will start doing it."

If you're going green, take a lesson from these college kids. Make it fun and make it a group effort. [New York Times]