Everywhere you turn, the drive toward eco-conscious "green" living seems to be spreading, especially at America's colleges and universities. With a willingness to speak out and campaign for change, college students have long earned their reputation as progressive, sometimes wide-eyed idealists, and the green movement has inspired a new generation of activists.

Whether it's implementing a strict recycling program or devising a multi-year plan for becoming carbon-neutral, more and more schools, often spurred to action by their students, are striving to become more eco-friendly. Here are 12 of the most noteworthy examples.

1) College of the Atlantic - Bar Harbor, Maine

This tiny college of just 300 undergrads and seven graduate students is so committed to being green that it offers its bachelor's and master's degrees in only one field: human ecology.

The College of the Atlantic made headlines in December 2007 by becoming the first college or university in the United States to go carbon-neutral, reducing and completely offsetting its output of greenhouse gas emissions.

Over 250 other colleges and universities around the country have since followed the College of the Atlantic down the road toward carbon neutrality. In this sense, the College of the Atlantic can be thought of as a pioneer, spearheading an institutional movement for the ecologically sound operation of colleges and universities.

2) Middlebury College - Middlebury, Vermont

Not far from the College of the Atlantic, Vermont's Middlebury College has been vigorously campaigning its board of trustees to approve a plan that would have the school achieving carbon-neutral status by the year 2016.

Middlebury's vocal squad of students for climate change has been a major driving force behind the school's push to go green, leading to such ambitious efforts as campus-wide increased use of public transportation and energy-saving competitions in each dorm. Some Middlebury students have even taken their movement beyond Vermont's borders, joining other students in New Hampshire to organize the 2007 Climate Summer campaign.

3) Evergreen State College - Olympia, Washington

This Washington-state school has a rich tradition of eco-friendly practices and operations. Home to a 13-acre organic farm with a compost facility and powered by 100-percent clean energy, Evergreen State is a pristine model of sustainability from top to bottom.

Food grown on the Evergreen farm is sold to Aramark, the school's food service provider. Proceeds from the sale of the farm's crops are used to help fund student projects, and excess crop production is given to the local charities and food bank.

4) Oberlin College - Oberlin, Ohio

In 2005, Oberlin students and faculty teamed up to create a Web-based tracking system that continually monitors and tallies the amount of energy and water being used in each dorm. The Oberlin Campus Resource Monitoring System has been a runaway success, providing students with up-to-the-minute breakdowns of their consumption, along with suggestions for cutting down without sacrificing comfort.

Then last year, students embarked on a project to help people share cars on campus, in order to reduce the need for everyone to have her or his own separate car.

Named the number-one school last year in the Sierra Club's list of "10 Coolest Schools" in the fight against global warming, Oberlin uses the largest solar energy array in Ohio.

5) Harvard University - Cambridge, Massachusetts

Besides aggressively pursuing certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for a number of campus buildings that adhere to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards, Harvard has also been doing all the little things and doing them right: from switching to motion-sensor lights in classrooms to converting school trucks to run on spare vegetable oil from the dining facility. Little by little, these small steps have added up to a much more eco-friendly campus that's continuing to make significant progress.

6) Warren Wilson College - Swannanoa, North Carolina

Warren Wilson College, named number three in the "10 Coolest Schools" list, is almost entirely self-supporting, going so far as to get its food and lumber from farmland and gardens managed by school employees in order to reduce the need to purchase outside materials or to waste gas having supplies delivered. The school has also installed low light-pollution streetlamps and encourages students to minimize their energy use.

7) Duke University - Durham, North Carolina

Elsewhere in North Carolina, Duke University is undertaking an equally ambitious environmental effort, requiring that all future campus construction be certified by the U.S. Green Building Council and overhauling the school's bicycle trails in an effort to encourage cycling and cut down on vehicle emissions. Duke is also planning to rely increasingly on wind and hydropower to meet the school's energy needs.

8) University of California

One of the most widespread efforts to go green is being made by the University of California across all 10 of its campuses. The UC system has set goals to boost the use of low- and zero-emission cars and trucks by 50 percent by the year 2010, to generate 10 megawatts of renewable energy by 2014, and to achieve zero waste and carbon neutrality by 2020.

UCLA has had particularly encouraging success, increasing bicycle use by 50 percent. UC Berkley also deserves praise for operating the first university CCOF-certified organic kitchen in one of its dining halls.

9) Berea College - Berea, Kentucky

Thanks in large part to its Ecovillage, Berea College is serving as a model of sustainable living not just among college campuses but for the broader Kentucky community. The five-acre Ecovillage, designed as an ecologically sustainable residential complex for students and student families, incorporates a number of green-design elements, including eco-friendly appliances, heavy insulation, solar energy panels, wind-powered electrical generators, and rainwater collection systems.

Berea's Ecovillage, like the UC schools, has set green performance goals for itself, including a 75-percent reduction in energy use, a 75-percent reduction in per-capita water use, and the recycling, re-use, or composting of at least 50 percent of all community-generated waste.

10) Tufts University - Medford, Massachusetts

Affectionately referred to by students and alumni as "OG" (for "original green"), Tufts University is famous for crafting the country's first-ever "university environmental policy," a practice now becoming commonplace. Coming in at number nine on the "10 Coolest Schools" list, Tufts has outfitted its newest dorm with energy-harnessing solar panels, installed energy-saving motion sensors on the vending machines across campus, and uses an all-electric tractor to mow the university's organically tended baseball field.

11) Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Many of CMU's buildings are outfitted with "green roofs" designed by students as class projects, and the school claims that its "green dorms" were the first of their kind in the nation. Another of CMU's environmental efforts is a research center that uses a modular raised-floor system said to double the fresh air circulating throughout the building without using any electricity or circulation equipment.

12) Yale University - New Haven, Connecticut

Yale has pledged to lower its greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020 to 10 percent below what they were in 1990. To meet its goal, Yale is implementing a variety of green initiatives, including the purchase of carbon offsets, new building designs that meet green construction standards, and plans for tapping into renewable energy sources like wind and solar.