For six weeks, a select few Philadelphia University students participate in the university’s “Eco-Challenge” program. In an effort to encourage sustainability, the university, located on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Penn., implemented the program which encourages students to recycle and reduce waste.
According to Laurie Tuttle, Associate Director of Residential Life for the university, the residents of the five-person townhouses are eligible to participate in the Eco-Challenge.
“Students apply to be part of the program during the spring semester,” Tuttle said. “The challenge takes place during the fall semester, the challenge monitors water, electric and heat along with the amount recycled.”
The green-minded housing initiative is sponsored by the university’s Sustainability Committee and the energy and waste output will be monitored by Dr. Anne Brower’s Biology and Earth Science classes.
““The Eco-Challenge is an example of the type of cross-disciplinary Power to Do at Philadelphia University with students from multiple majors researching alternatives and putting them into action to explore green lifestyle alternatives that our nations must implement now for a sustainable future,” Brower said on the PhilaU Web site.
“Students participating have a faculty advisor that they meet with throughout the challenge,” Tuttle said. “Dr. Brower is one of the advisors to the residents.”
Tuttle explains that the students participating in the challenge are also given $100 to put towards items that could potentially “assist in the improvement of their sustainability”.
The challenge requires students to have their electricity usage, water usage, and recycling and garbage output measured over the course of the six weeks.
“The team with the lowest energy and water use, lowest amount of garbage and highest amount of recycling will receive a cash prize,” Tuttle said. “We will also consider the amount of contamination within the trash itself. Contaminated trash receives no credit.”
In fact, the first place townhouse will receive $1000 to be split among the residents, with second and third places being awarded $500 and $250 respectively.
Erin Maldonado, a resident of “Townhouse C” for this year’s challenge, said that as the weeks pass students find more and more ways to conserve energy.
“We learned that unplugging things such as microwaves and cell phone chargers really conserves energy,” she said. “It shows you pretty quickly how much energy you’re actually wasting.”
In order to be eligible for the challenge, students must apply before the housing lottery begins in the spring and each participating townhouse is required to keep a blog of their experiences as a supplement to the challenge. This Tuttle says, is part of an effort to implement permanent changes in the way students use energy.
“The goal of this program is to implement new energy behaviors in students,” she said. “It is about teaching them more environmentally-friendly ways of life that they can use forever.”
On the blog for Townhouse D, resident Zachary Mentzer addressed this very issue.
““We are invested in this project,” he wrote. “It’s less about the competition. The Eco-Challenge is a catalyst to change our lives.”
For some, the challenge even provides an opportunity for underclassmen to reside in the traditionally junior and senior townhouses.
Corey Brown, a freshman, will be participating in the challenge next year with 4 roommates of her choosing.
“We’re really looking forward to being part of the challenge,” Brown said. “Not only would it be awesome to win the prize money, but it gives us a chance to help conserve energy and live in a more eco-friendly way- something that is important to all of us.”
Like Brown, Samantha Kane, also a freshman, is looking forward to helping the environment and to living in a residence with more privacy than her small dorm room.
“It’s a great situation for us to be in,” Kane said. “We get to be a part of something that is teaching us to be better citizens, and we get to live in a huge townhouse and have our own bedrooms.”
Three of the university’s eight townhouses participate in the challenge, which lasts only six weeks. For the 2008 Eco-challenge, the residents of townhouses C, D, and H were the ones chosen to participate.
“The ultimate goal of the challenge is to lessen the students’ overall carbon footprints,” Tuttle said. “We as a university really want the students to understand the impact even one person can have on the environment.”
Ranked on the Yale Offices of Sustainability’s Web site as one of the most “sustainable campuses” in the country, Philadelphia University’s eco-challenge has sparked participants to permanently change the way they use electricity and other resources.
The residents of Townhouse C, Kaitlin Jones, Rachel Lubin, Erin Maldonado, Stephanie Reinke and Jennifer Rushalski, offer their suggestions for the easiest ways to lower electricity use on their blog.
“Install automatic sleep-mode on computer appliances,” they wrote. “Companies waste over $1 billion a year on computer monitors, fax machines, printers, etc. that should be turned off when instead they are left on. Installing an automatic sleep mode feature costs nothing. The EPA provides free software that can do this for your computer.”
The challenge’s future participants, including Brown and Kane are already looking at the experiences of this year’s participants for insight into how to win.
“We’re really taking this challenge seriously,” Brown said. “We have been looking into energy saving appliances and materials to use in the house. We’re hoping we can cut back usage right off the bat by using environmentally friendly materials like bamboo and shower timers.”
Tuttle is also looking forward to the challenge.
“Its fascinating to see the outcomes each year,” she said. “The participants get more and more invested and motivated as the challenge goes on, and each year we get more and more dedicated groups of volunteers.”
If you want to know more about PhilaU's Eco-Challenge, feel free to visit the following Web Sites:
http://townhousec.blogspot.com/
http://ecochallengetownhoused.blogspot.com/
http://townhouseh.blogspot.com/
http://www.yale.edu/sustainability/
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