Biodiesel in buses. Grass on roofs. Organic food in cafeterias. Renewable electricity in the wall sockets.

America's colleges are turning greener faster than a chemically fertilized lawn in spring. And it's not just schools with a granola-crunching, tree-hugging image that are wrapping themselves in a flag of fair-trade, organically grown, naturally dyed cotton.

James Madison University has a biodiesel program that has been praised in a presidential speech. The University of Virginia is about to launch a $105 million certifiably environmentally friendly building project. Radford University has created a wetland pond that serves as a laboratory and a filtering system for runoff headed toward the New River. Norfolk State University, Sweet Briar College and Randolph-Macon Woman's College have all signed the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment, which obligates schools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and teach sustainability.

"It adds another piece to our green initiative," said Karin Warren, holder of the Herzog Family chair of environmental studies at Randolph-Macon Woman's College. "I think of it as the latest piece in the puzzle."

And it's good business planning, Warren said. Students, the college's customers, want environmental education on an environmentally conscious campus. And energy efficiency saves money.

But it's more than that, too, said Virginia Worden, the college's interim president.

"It seems to me, at this time in our nation's history and the world's situation we all need to be making our own little commitments," Worden said.

UVa is completing a yearlong sustainability assessment and discovered it is doing more than the administration realized, said Julia Monteith, the university's senior land-use planner. There's the energy efficiency program, the water conservation and storm water programs, recycling that eliminates 40 percent of UVa's waste stream, the environmentally friendly building plans and a fleet of biodiesel buses.

At many schools, the push for greenness comes from students. At Radford University, the formula is almost reversed. When students got excited about the idea of cutting energy use, it turned out the school was ahead of them.

Judy Guinan, director of the RU Environmental Center, said more than 99 percent of the campus has switched over to compact florescent light bulbs, and motion sensors are installed even in some dorms. Some dorms have heating and cooling systems that shut off when students open windows. Buildings are cooled with ice systems and by pumping unconditioned outside air when the weather is right. There's a campuswide recycling program and alternative fuels in some campus vehicles. Much of the push came from the facilities department, Guinan said, from the people responsible for taking care of the buildings and grounds.

Kate Gaston and Miriam Scott are trying to get RU students more involved. Co-presidents of The Green Team, a student environmental organization, they have tried to get the word out about trips to mountaintop removal coal mine sites, cleanups on campus and along the New River, and postcard campaigns for environmental legislation.

They have taken to working with other student groups to promote events such as the March 6 appearance of Robert Watson, director for environmentally and socially sustainable development at the World Bank.

But The Green Team has found it difficult to persuade students to join in.

"It's not just education," Scott said. "It's deconstruction of lifestyles that we're dealing with."

The pair promised to keep working. "We're trying to do everything we can to make a difference," Gaston said, "because we really need one."