On Monday, I read this article in the NYT about a “sustainability house” at Oberlin College with interest.

The house, called SEED (Student Experiment in Ecological Design) represents a growing effort on college campuses — including the University of Hawaii — to consume less energy, reduce carbon emissions and recycle.

Although it seems they’re still trying to nail down exactly what it means to have a “sustainable house,” the eight housemates in the Oberlin house mastered such skills as worm composting, staying warm with the thermostat set at 60 degrees (a feat — Ohio winters can be COLD), living without TV, and taking shorter showers by sticking a photo of Sen. John Edwards on the ceiling above the showerhead.

They even consolidated all their food into one fridge (there are two kitchens) and unplugged all the appliances in one kitchen.

My college held a contest with similar goals. The different houses competed to see who could lower their electricity bill the most from the previous year’s. The month-long competition was called “Do It In The Dark.”

Some students went to great lengths to compete, pushing each other to turn off lights whenever they left a room, unplug lap tops and take quick showers. Unfortunately, our house, which had eight girls, did not win the contest. But the campus did save $10,000 in electricity bills during spring 2006, my senior year.

(AND we earned a nod from Thomas Friedman.)

The University of Hawaii at Manoa is working on its own sustainable building project, Sustainable Saunders, a student and faculty-led effort to make 7-story Saunders Hall a model for sustainability on the UH campus (see photo). UH is the second-largest consumer of electricity on Oahu, after military services, and according to the Sustainable Saunders web site, about $1.5 million in student tuition goes to pay the university’s electricity bill each month.

“Sustainability” has become a buzz-word that’s often easy to brush off as a vague and unreachable idea. But it has to be a very real idea in Hawai‘i, which remains the most oil-dependent state in the nation. And for young people, who may see many of the natural resources we now take for granted disappear within our lifetimes, caring about sustainability is more than just a trend — it’s caring about the quality of our lives, our future.

So go ahead, no shame: Tell your friends to do it in the dark.

Photo: Sustainable Saunders Earth Day 2008 on Flickr.