1) Graze on 100-percent-organic veggie-soy wheatgrass at the student center health café. So what if this faux food tastes as disgusting as it smells and costs more than a carton of Twinkies? Your skin tone will develop a cool shade of sour apple that will demonstrate to all who are checking—especially your cute professors—that you are pro-green.
2) Recycle your impressive collection of lite beer, cherry coke, Dr Pepper, and Red Bull cans. FYI, container waste is not a design choice.
3) Ride a bike instead of driving a car. This may save the planet from toxic gas emissions and really annoying cataclysmic global warming. What fun you will have pushing the pedals through five feet of snow and ice in single-digit temperatures and gale-force winds.
4) Ditch the microwave. No midnight popcorn breaks or breakfast burritos for you. No nuking is good nuking. Orville Redenbacher and Jimmy Dean be damned—corn kernels are desperately needed for ethanol conversion.
5) Shower with complete strangers, or better yet, skip that shower! Nobody will care; everybody smells funky at college.
6) Keep a pet goat in your dorm room to manage tiresome housekeeping tasks. This will eliminate the need for garbage pickups. Toilet training your four-legged, 105-pound buddy can be an exciting adventure for both of you. Benefit: it never hurts to have a hairy, horny friend as long winter nights away from home can be, oh, so lonely.
7) Wind power. Convert your professors’ interminably coma-inducing lectures into wind power by surreptitiously hooking them up to your genius roommate’s advanced eco-biotech-engineering class project.
8) Turn the thermostat way down. If the climate gods had meant for you to be warm and cozy, they would have given you a dense, matted coat of animal fur—or better yet, a girl/boyfriend.
9) Make your own clothing. Cuts down on environmentally mean toxic chemicals used in manufacturing normal store-bought clothes. No knowledge of sewing is necessary—duct tape, staples, and fabric remainders from Dumpsters will do the trick. So what if you look like an agoraphobic from an incestuous religious cult?
10) Propeller hat. Wear one and wear it proudly as it is a viable, albeit humble, form of windmill power. Fast becoming a classic in the serious advocate’s wardrobe.
Barb Best, 2010 Erma Bombeck Global Humor winner
