“We’re always doing things on using less materials, or changing from thick, heavy materials to lightweight materials,” Selke said. “We’re also doing research on bio-based and biodegradable materials and research on composting these materials.”

Some businesses have even been coming to the school to see how they can limit their impact on the environment, she said.

“Companies are considering the environmental impact in packaging,” Selke said. “A couple of products companies came to us about biodegradable plastics and if it meets their needs.”

Many packaging courses have added an interest in these types of issues, she said.

“This fall, one of the faculty will be building sustainable modules to enhance classes,” Selke said.

“He will be coming to each class for a week and give a concentrated education in aspects of overall topic of sustainability.

Then afterwards this information will be available for the teachers of these classes to use in the future.”

Scott Witter, director of the School of Planning, Design and Construction, said environmental movement reaches every part of the school.

“Our overall focal area is a sustainable-built and natural environment,” Witter said.

One of the new focuses of the school is to begin classes in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, a program that qualifies “green” buildings, so students can adapt to a job market that is requiring more environmental experience.

“A lot of our current faculty are LEED certified, and we are looking at ways to have all of our students LEED certified by the time they graduate,” Witter said.

LEED is a building certification program started by the U.S. Green Building Council, or USGBC, in 2000, said Matt Syal, a LEED-certified construction management professor.

The program determines what is a green building, awarding up to 69 points for a structure, based on the quality of the site, water use, energy use, materials, indoor environmental quality and an open-ended category for innovation in implementing these ideas, Syal said.

“We’re looking at all the facilities of a building,” Witter said. “Heating and cooling, materials used in the building, landscaping around the building, so we use all of our natural resources as well as the building itself in a sustainable manner.”

Syal said the demand for green buildings — and research — has exploded over the past few years.

“We’re doing work with other countries,” Syal said. “Green building right now is not a fad anymore, it has definitely entered the mainstream.”

Currently the department is working with India, Korea, Italy and Turkey.

The USGBC has said they wanted to have 100,000 commercial buildings, and 1 million homes, LEED certified by 2010, Syal said. By 2020 the USGBC wants 1 million LEED-certified commercial buildings and 10 million green homes.

Kate Yelvington, an arts and humanities senior, said if the university has the technology to be more environmentally conscious it should.

“If they can have less of an impact on the environment and save money and also be on the cutting edge of something, it just makes sense,” said Yelvington, a member of Eco, a campus sustainability group.

Thomas Voice, director of the environmental engineering program in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said much of the concern about the environment wavers from the public, though right now the support is better than it has been in the past. Environmental engineering deals with everything from measuring air, soil and water quality, to how combating pollution affects the environment.

“It seems that there’s sort of a period of anti-environmentalism and then there’s a period of environmentalism, and it goes back and forth,” Voice said.

“I would say we’re in a time that’s OK. It’s not the most booming times we’ve seen nor is it sort of the most distressing times.”

Unlike some market-driven areas of research, which can make money on what is popular in the public, most of the work he does is determined by whatever the government feels is important at the time, and where they give grants to conduct research.

“In our case it tends to be government actions because protecting the environment is a fundamentally collective goal not an individual goal,” Voice said. “Most people individually don’t go out spending money protecting the environment. They may recycle, they may do things like that but most environmental protection activities are carried out because of regulations or government actions.”