Go Green with Online Education

On April 22, the planet celebrates Earth Day and looks for ways to become more earth-conscious and leave a smaller carbon footprint. By searching #EarthDay on Twitter, we saw lots of creative ways people have to go green on Earth Day:

1. Watch Earth Day related movies like 2012, the 11th Hour, Pocahontas. We added Avatar, Fern Gully and An Inconvenient Truth to the list
2. Take “Power Showers” and switch off the water when your soaping/shampooing
3. Save water by showering with someone
4. Recycle old electronics and computers and even gadgets. Would you wear a recycled cassette tape necktie, or use a rubber tire laptop sleeve?
5. And our personal favorite: raise free-range children

One way you may not have considered to go green is to engage in online education. Whether you’re a student pursuing a college education, or a working professional improving your qualifications for increased opportunities, online education is a terrific solution. Not only does online education give you the freedom and flexibility to work/live/tweet, online education is another way to go green.

The commute… or lack thereof

Imagine waking up, rolling out of bed, and commuting to the living room for your Psychology 101 class. Does that sound like the type of commute you could live with? Online education allows students to further their education anywhere they have internet access. Whether that is the break room at work, the community library, or the cafe in France you landed a job at while living abroad, online education comes to you.

Energy conservation

A traditional campus, with it all its classrooms, lecture halls, labs, and offices, use electricity and energy to light, heat, and cool the premises all year round, not to mention manpower to supervise, secure, and landscape the premises. Colleges in the U.S. put $2 billion per year into energy on campus according to the EPA. Your online classroom is you and your laptop. That’s a lot of energy saved.

Save the trees

Instead of printing handouts, assignments, and projects, online education allows teachers and students to communicate through an online blackboard and via email. Assignments can be turned in through an attachment in an email, rather than a double spaced, single sided printed copy, saving paper, trees, and ink. Since 1 billion trees worth of paper are discarded every year, imagine how many trees would be saved through the paper preservation with online education.

The e-book alternative

Instead of investing hundreds of dollars each semester in textbooks you’ll only use once, e-books are a green alternative. If any new editions are released, rather than printing a whole new edition, the e-book can digitally be updated.

While Earth Day reminds us of our collective responsibility to preserve the planet, investing in an online education will help you to go green everyday.

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