Today’s guest post is written by Joseph Baker. He enjoys volunteering in his community, writing, and baking. Read his work at professionalintern.com.

Of the well-known commandments of reduce, reuse, recycle, each has its own importance, but reduce is honored with the prime listing, and for good reason. In the positive role played by universities as leaders in adopting known green practices and developing innovative new approaches to environmental responsibility, perhaps the greatest net impact has been made by digital learning. Moving from the obvious to the definitive benefits of online learning, harnessing those using e-learning may be the next giant leap for students driving sound environmental conventions.

Going beyond reduce

Let’s start with the baseline gains of moving away from climate-controlled campus buildings and reams of paper-per-pupil by using digital technology. As more and more students take e-learning courses, read their learning material via e-books, and idle their cars while attending class in their own rooms, the potential for moving beyond the reduction of carbon consumption grows, waiting to be accessed. While these efforts resulting in greener education are laudable, the next step is harnessing that online community to exploit the environmental gains they’ve already established.

A teachable moment

To be realistic, a good percentage of those seeking an online bachelor degree didn’t do so primarily because of environmental concerns. Like with any other teachable moment, you start where the learner is, not where you hope he or she would be. There exists a real opportunity to raise self-awareness among those already making a positive impact on the environment, especially if they’re not all that cognizant of that fact. Who better to carry out this goal than those fellow learners already buying into the deliberate practice of reducing their carbon footprint?

Building the community

There is a built-in advantage among digital students when it comes to generating an advocacy community. Savvy in the use of technology by their learning environment, online students can organize through social media platforms, existing student activities, and blogging. As the foundational ideas of reducing environmental impact are already well established, the first goal of any such group would simply be to build self-awareness among fellow scholars who might not ever have known the good they’ve been doing.

The wheel as it exists

One of many good starting points for moving students beyond the relatively passive act of reducing the consumption of resources to becoming thought leaders who actively drive further innovation are the schools themselves.  Eco-friendly schools include both online schools as well as traditional universities whose steps to reduce continue to provide examples to the non-digital world. What university wouldn’t be happy to help facilitate the broadcasting of its own achievements in becoming eco-friendly? Students actively working to develop new strategies for reducing energy consumption will likely have strong allies – and resources – within their schools. The need to create a new means of attracting like minds is, in this case, unnecessary.

Critical mass

Ultimately, the end game of raising awareness of how colleges in general and online learning specifically have reduced consumption is to expand the scope of those actively thinking about new ways to reduce. Until those accidentally making choices that lead to reducing their carbon footprint become aware of two realities, one being the benefit their choice has, and two, the buy in that those benefits are worthy pursuits, they will continue to be a limiting factor for the viral growth of ideas needed. This isn’t to say that everyone already acting in a way that reduces carbon emissions has to adopt these beliefs, but it does mean that the seeds of desire grow into this critical mass. When that happens, good things are bound to happen to consumption habits.