As the class of 2012 heads off to university this fall and new high-school seniors start the admissions process, some may wonder if their college of choice fits with their own environmental ideals.

Recently, the Princeton Review added a green rating to its annual ranking of the best colleges. This score measures how “environmentally friendly, responsible, and committed the institutions are.”

The schools that scored 99 (out of 100) are:

• Arizona State University, Tempe
• Bates College
• Binghamton University
• College of the Atlantic
• Emory University
• Georgia Institute of Technology
• Harvard University
• University of New Hampshire
• University of Oregon
• University of Washington
• Yale University

The complete list is in the 2009 editions of three Princeton Review college books.

But what really makes for a “green college”? Different organizations have their own criteria, so if the environment is an important factor in where you’ll be spending the next four+ years (and a boatload of money), compare lists and do more research.

For two years, the independent Sustainable Endowments Institute has published a Green Report Card. The full report is available as a PDF online, and it evaluates 200 public and private universities.

The Green Report Card looks at more than just green buildings and recycling. It asks how the schools are using their substantial endowments to support sustainable efforts and fight climate change.

Overall college sustainability leaders on the report card include:

• Carleton College
• Dartmouth College
• Harvard University
• Middlebury College
• University of Washington
• University of Virginia

Check out the complete report card for more high-ranking green schools.

And then there are more subjective lists, like the Daily Green’s top 10 colleges, Grist’s 15 greenest colleges, the Sierra Club’s 10 cool schools, and Campus Corner’s greenest college towns.

You’ll see some overlap in all these rankings. For example, everybody loves Harvard’s green campus initiatives, and how can the tiny College of the Atlantic go wrong with a 100% focus on human ecology and sustainability?

But lesser-known schools and not-obviously green schools are looking to reduce their carbon footprint too. Over 550 university presidents have signed on to the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, which pledges to eliminate campus greenhouse gas emissions. Signatories include Boise State University, Eckerd College, Indiana State University, Temple University, and University of North Texas.

Seems like every school has its own take on what’s earth-friendly, and the efforts are often run by the students. You might find co-eds timing their showers in a “sustainability” dorm like Oberlin’s Student Experiment in Ecological Design house. Or you can do it in the dark with students at Williams College — they turned out lights for the whole month of April as an Earth Day experiment.

No matter what the campus is doing, you can make the college years more eco-friendly on your own. Work in some of these environmentally friendly tips like putting CFLs in your dorm lights and using your printer wisely. The Green Student U site has more ideas, plus you can post your own suggestions.

No matter what car you drive, at some point, you gotta clean it. But traditional car washes are a tremendous waste of water, not to mention those soapy suds can go down the city drains and potentially corrupt the water supply.

There is an alternative. Eco Touch is a waterless car wash product that is non-toxic, biodegradable, and petrochemical-free. Just spray it on and wipe it off, that’s all it takes to have a clean, shiny car. Then throw the special microfiber towels in the wash and reuse.

Made from plant-derived surfactants (coconut and soy) and a water-soluble polymer, Eco Touch contains no fragrances, dyes, or phosphates. Not only does it save on water, it will save you big money from taking the car to the car wash (which averages a visit, plus gas). One bottle of Eco Touch averages 8 to 12 washes for .99. Do the math, and count the green you’re saving.

This is also a savings over washing your car using the garden hose, which runs up your water bill. And with recent water shortages across the U.S., this spritz wash will keep you from wasting those precious drops.

Best part is, Eco Touch is not labor-intensive like messy water washes. I’m the type who has little time, energy, or interest for cleaning, especially big jobs. But I’ve been using this product for the past few months, and it only takes me a quick 10 minutes to clean my whole car.

One tip: If you’ve really let your car go until it’s covered with a thick cake of grime, you may want to take a trip to the car wash. Eco Touch works best if you clean regularly or to hold you over (and let you go a little longer) between regular washes.

For those who want to go the extra mile in detailing, the company also offers a metal polish for rims, fenders, and grills; dashboard and trim cleaner for use on interior leather and vinyl; and carpet and upholstery Cleaner for heavy-duty stain lifting without using harsh chemicals.

Couple this stuff with a cordless mini-vac to go over seats and carpet, and your car will look like one clean, green machine.

Months later, you finally used up those gift cards from the holidays. Now you’re stuck with a pile of plastic credit-card-like thingies. Should you toss ‘em in the trash where they’ll end up in the landfill? Or can they be recycled?

Plenty Magazine has the answer. But, like so many things, it’s not a simple one.

Some companies, like Borders Books, REI, Target, and Wal-Mart, now use bio-plastics for their gift cards. These corn-based cards will decompose in your compost bin after a month or two.

However, many gift cards are still made of PVC — a plastic that is pretty toxic to produce and not widely recycled. It’s unlikely that your curbside recycling service will accept the cards.

For these cards, Plenty recommends sending them to Earthworks Systems. This company will recycle old cards into new ones for free.

True eco-confessions time: I never learned to ride a bike. Of course, I never learned to drive a car either, so I think my green cred is in no great danger. But my lack of biking skills means that I was a little surprised by Gavin Hudson’s 17 reasons why bicycles are the most popular vehicle in the world today post on the EcoWorldly blog.

Sure, biking is healthy (#2 on the list), and bikes save money (#12 and tangentially #1). And bikes are zero-emission vehicles (#15, though I’d put that higher on the list).

But did you realize that bicycling can break down economic divides and build communities? Bicycle advocacy groups help bring people together in many places.

Cycling is good for public finances too. The Australian government estimates that it saves 7.2 million per year in health costs, thanks to folks on bikes. Aussie cycle sales have spiked for eight years straight.

Maybe it’s time for me to hit the road. Not with a car — certainly not with these crazy gas prices — but with a bike. About.com has some useful tips for buying and maintaining a bike. Guess I should join the more than a billion bikes around the world.

Sewing might seem like an archaic skill in the 21st century, but it’s a fun way to green up your lifestyle, add some flair to your wardrobe, and even save some money. You don’t even need a sewing machine for most projects — just a few basic needles, some scissors, straight pins, and thread.

The Daily Green points out that July 25 is Thread the Needle Day — a traditional holiday for tailors, seamstresses, and garment workers. So why not take this time to acquaint yourself with a little stitchery?

Mend, don’t toss

The most eco-friendly thing you can do is repair stuff instead of throwing it in the garbage. According to thrift-store chain Savers, the average American throws away about 67 pounds of clothing every year!

While some of that may be threadbare socks, nasty undies, or frightening fashion disasters, surely some of those pounds of clothes are just missing a button or have a saggy hem.

Never sewn a stitch? Instructables to the rescue. Start with this step-by-step how to sew tutorial. This page guides you through the basics of hand-sewing. CraftStylish also has a useful primer to get to know your hand-sewing needles.

The most common mending task is replacing a button. They always fall off. But they’re quick to put back on. It helps if you’ve saved the original, of course. eHow has a nice tutorial on how to sew on a button. So easy, a teenager could do it.

Pants need hemming? Check out Expert Village’s complete video series on how to hem pants. From picking the right thread to marking the hem to cutting off old hems, you won’t need an expensive tailor after watching these vids. This technique also works for skirts and dresses. Take it from a gal who’s 5’2″ — hemming is an important skill!

One common reason clothes get thrown out is sticky or separated zippers. For zippers that don’t run smoothly, try rubbing a candle or a piece of soap across the teeth, then zipping and unzipping the zipper a few times. If the zipper has come apart, check out eHow’s instructions for repairing a separated zipper. You’ll just need some pliers, a needle, and thread.

Don’t forget about your shoes too. You may not be able to repair them at home, but taking them to a cobbler is cheaper than a new pair of loafers or Jimmy Choos. Most shoes can be re-heeled a few times before the uppers actually wear out.

Running shoes don’t need to be replaced until after 350-550 miles of use. If you run 25 miles a week, that means you need new shoes every three to four months. The rest of us slackers can keep our sneaks for ages!

Add your own style

Decorating plain clothes can give them new life so you don’t want to toss ‘em out. In fact, it’s become quite the niche in sewing and craft stores as well as book stores — so if you need inspiration, you’ll find it fast.

A great place to cruise for ideas is the Wardrobe Refashion community (which I’ve praised before). The blog is for people who pledge not to buy new clothes for a few months, and instead they remodel old clothes or sew new clothes from scratch.

Here are some simple ways to makeover something in your wardrobe:

• Sew unusual buttons on a jacket or shirt.
• Shorten a skirt or dress.
• Turn a long-sleeve skirt into a short-sleeve one.
• Cut long pants into shorts.
• Sew a band of trim near the hem of a straight or A-line skirt.
• Dye a white or pale garment a new color.
• Make a baggy button-down shirt more fitted.

Some of these updates will be easier with a sewing machine. If you’ve never bought one, read through this detailed sewing machine shopper’s guide written by a very experienced friend of mine. That should help you ask the right questions at the store.

Hit the runway

You can take recycling to the next level by making totally new garments out of old ones. For example, Threadbanger has videos on making a new tie out of old ties and a dress out of men’s slacks.

On the One Pearl Blog, you can see how to revamp an old sweater into an adorable cardigan. It just took a big snip, some edging, and a little decoration (to cover up a stain).

Check out these two different ideas for making an old pair of jeans into a denim skirt: sleek pencil skirt or sassy A-line skirt. Both use similar methods for varied effects.

If you want to learn to sew stuff from scratch, SewMarm‘s YouTube channel has some handy tips on everything from inserting the bobbin on a sewing machine to making a 1920s-inspired dress in one hour.

BurdaStyle also has useful tutorials on techniques like pleats, different types of seams, pockets, and buttonholes.

Sewing doesn’t require a huge, up-front investment, although it’s easy to go nuts at a fabric store. Keep it eco-friendly by looking at thrift-stores for fabric. I love using sheets, tablecloths, and curtains as material because you get a huge piece of great yardage on the cheap. And making over clothes you already own is definitely green since you’re reducing garbage.

The extra benefit is that you’ll have a wardrobe like nobody else! Who needs Project Runway?

You’ll spend eight months over the course of your life dealing with junk mail (the paper kind, not the email stuff; that’s another story). And that’s even though we toss 44% of it into the garbage unopened. More than 100 million trees are used every year to create the junk mail we’re sent.

Now the New York Times reports that direct-marketing companies think they can make junk mail “greener.” Yeah, right, as if! Like that will make us enjoy wasting our time even more.

Apparently, a group called the Green Marketing Coalition is involving companies like Microsoft and Washington Mutual in ever-so-slightly less awful direct-mail practices. The organization encourages using recycled paper, for instance. It even recommends removing the names of dead people from the marketing lists. Real smart.

The greener option is to opt out of junk mail entirely. Try some of these tips for ditching junk mail. You’ll have to contact the direct-mail associations and credit card bureaus directly to get off their lists.

Another handy resource is Catalog Choice. This group will contact merchants like L.L. Bean and Victoria’s Secret on your behalf, for free, and get them to stop sending you paper catalogs.

You can also use a service like Green Dimes. The basic service offers a do-it-yourself kit for free, or you pay to to have Green Dimes do the work for you. It promises to eliminate up to 90% of postal junk mail for up to five years.

Why wait for retailers and their marketers to make junk mail eco-friendly? Just get rid of the problem at the source, and stop receiving as much junk mail. You’ll save some trees and your own precious time.

If you’re unfamiliar with LOLcats, then you won’t find this post at all amusing. Just go read the news or something.

But if you can has a funny, then pop over to Globalwarminghateskittens.com. This one-joke site shows kittens who care about climate change, LOL-style.

They’re tree huggers, they’re afraid of increased mosquitoes due to rising world temperatures, and they’re worried about flooding.

Each photo of an adorable feline includes an informative link about the topic too. So you get cute kitties, a clever joke, and environmental news. Have the dogs done as much for us lately?

Greenies aren’t the only ones looking to limit their car usage these days. High gas prices are fueling inflation for everyone across America.

No matter if you drive a Prius or a Hummer, you can probably stand to save a few bucks on gas right now. Here is our collection of tips for getting the most out of each gallon…

• Use the cruise, clean the car: Forecast Earth covers the classic tricks, such as using cruise control and maintaining your car. This is a great list to begin with.
• Hypermile your way to better mpg: Pulse-and-glide driving is how those ultra-efficient hypermilers get great mileage, even without a hybrid car.
• Carpool at least once a week: Ask around your office and see whose route meets up with yours. Parents can also arrange carpools for driving kids to school. Alternate who drives, and you’ll automatically cut gas costs.
• Drive slower: Driving just 10 miles slower can reduce fuel consumption by 20 percent. And no, you won’t burn more gas because it takes a tiny bit longer to get to your destination.
• Don’t sit idle: When you let your car idle, you might as well light a dollar bill on fire and toss it out the window. It’s been proven that stopping and restarting a car uses the same gas as leaving a car idling for 6 seconds with the air conditioner on. Today’s fuel-injected cars don’t need to warm up in cold weather either.
• Reduce air drag: The Rocky Mountain Institute estimates you can save 15 to 30 gallons of gas per year if you take off a roof rack just half the time. Besides, you only need it for skis when there’s actually snow on the ground.
• Ditch the drive-thru: One test in Toronto found that you can get a fast-food breakfast faster and burn less gas in your car if you park and go into the restaurant. Considering how much idling cars do in drive-thru lanes, this isn’t surprising.
• Think big, and light: Some of EcoGeek’s gas-saving tips are government-based (like intelligent traffic lights and minimum fuel economy; feel free to suggest these to your local and federal representatives!). But everyone can carry less junk in the trunk.

Gas prices may not drop dramatically any time soon. So perhaps you’re thinking about a new car — like a hybrid. They’ve lost the tree-hugger status and are pretty mainstream. Certainly, SUVs aren’t selling very well these days. Need some car advice?

• Rethinking the cost of hybrid cars: The Rocky Mountain Institute compares the Prius to the non-hybrid Accord and Civic and shows how the hybrid comes out ahead.
• Comparing hybrid to hybrid: EcoGeek summarizes the latest findings.
• Getting to know your Prius: A few handy resources for the new owner.
• Finding the best green cars: Yahoo! Autos Green Center is fully loaded with specs on current models, from hybrid to ethanol to ultra-efficient gasoline.

If you have an older car with great mpg and you’re wondering if your ride could be even more eco-friendly, check out EcoGeek’s analysis of the greenest cars coming in 2010. Just don’t fall for a ZAP car or that bunk about running cars with water.

You’ve probably seen a million lists of gas-savings tips recently (yes, Yahoo! has run our share, we admit). One of the suggestions is always to drive slower or drive the speed limit.

So someone finally asked Salon’s resident eco-expert if it’s really true that driving slower saves gas. After all, won’t you use more gas because it takes longer to get to your destination if you drive slower?

Not so fast, speedfreak. Pablo Päster says the savings is real, and it’s due to aerodynamic drag, which trumps the time savings of speeding down the freeway.

Basically “slower speed equals less drag,” and you can reduce fuel consumption by 20 percent if you slow down from 70 mph to 60 mph.

For comparison, if you drive 10 mph faster over a 30-mile commute, you’ll only shave four minutes off the total driving time. The savings doesn’t extend forever, so don’t bother creeping along the fast lane at 5 mph.

Salon mentions another great way to improve aerodynamics: Remove the roof rack. Our friends at the Rocky Mountain Institute estimate that you can save 15 to 30 gallons of gas per year if you leave off the rack just half the time. Most folks don’t need it up there all 365 days anyway.

Slow down, ditch the rack, and save some bucks. It’s true — it’s that easy.

Oprah hath spoken.
We must turn off our car engines while waiting to pick our children up at
school.

Oprah Winfrey’s 2007
Earth Day program featured EnginesOff.org,
a small (and sparse) blog dedicated to a simply powerful idea: When it comes to
keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere, every minute counts.

EnginesOff.org has
just a few links, but each is worthwhile. Founder Lynn Romanek’s segment on the
Oprah
Winfrey show is there for inspiration, as is a downloadable
sign (PDF) for promoting the idea at your kid’s school.

(Romanek has science
on her side, by the way. Studies have found that restarting a car uses the same
amount of fuel as idling for as little as 6
seconds. Let the car idle for anything beyond that, and you’re wasting
gas.)

Turning off your
engine is one way to green your trip to and from school each day. Here are
others:

Ride a bike
The simple act of
riding a bike can be hair-raising when you do it with your children. When
dozens of families pour onto the same roads at the same time before the opening
bell, it takes some organizing.

The Marin County
Bicycle Coalition’s Safe
Routes to Schools site offers a treasure trove of tips, tools, lesson
plans, and print-outs to help make your own pedaling safe and bring others
along for the ride. The resource
center is especially awesome — with links to model programs throughout the
United States. 

Take a walking school bus
Some good ideas know
no borders. The notion of a “walking school bus,” pioneered in New Zealand,
works anywhere there’s fresh air. Don’t talk to me about rain or snow. When I
was a kid… 

A walking school bus
is pretty much as it sounds: A parent walks a designated route, “picking
up” schoolchildren at stops along the way.

WalkingSchoolBus.org
tidies up the concept for U.S.
audiences. International Walk to School
Month is this October.

Carpool
Sharing a ride to
school has the green benefit of taking cars off the road. Another plus: All
those mornings that aren’t your turn. Let’s be honest.

There’s money to be
saved, too. RideFinders.org
has a simple calculator for figuring out exactly how much; the site skews
toward business commuters but the logic holds for parents as well.

Entering “find
carpool” in the Yahoo! Search engine results in dozens of matching
services, but if your school is anything like ours, the best way to find
collaborators is to ask around the school yard.

After you’ve turned
off your engine, of course.

Sam Silverstein is the editor of Yahoo! Green.