The University of Maryland at College Park and Rio Salado College in Tempe, Ariz., are expected to earn bragging rights for their green ambitions — at least according to organizers of the “America’s Greenest Campus” contest, which pitted colleges and universities against one another to reduce their carbon footprints.

The contest, which was funded by grants from the Department of Energy and various foundations, will award the two schools $5,000 each, to be put towards green initiatives on campus.

In total, more than 460 schools and 20,000 people participated in the contest, which began in April and was created as a partnership between Smart Power, a nonprofit clean-energy marketing company, and Climate Culture, a clean-energy social networking site (think Facebook meets the Jenny Craig of carbon).

Among other metrics, the schools saved a combined $4.5 million in energy costs and reduced their collective carbon output by 18.6 million pounds, a number roughly equivalent to the annual amount of carbon emitted by 1,900 cars.

The overall goal of the contest, according to organizers, was to change consumer behavior among people ages 17 to 24.

“They are the biggest wasters of energy and the most motivated to do something about it,” said Brian Keane, president of SmartPower. “Our job is to get regular people who don’t care about the environment or energy issues to want to buy clean energy and to want to be energy efficient.”

The University of Maryland had the most participants, according to the contest organizers, while Rio Salado had the highest average of carbon reduction per person. Official results will be announced on Wednesday.

To spread the word about the contest, organizers enlisted Russell Simmons, the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings and one of hip-hop music’s most senior delegates, as the contest’s main spokesman.

“It’s important that hip-hop play a fundamental role in this movement to get young people to change their behavior and reduce their carbon footprint,” Mr. Simmons said.

Whether it’s yellow diamonds or reducing a phantom load, Mr. Simmons added, “hip-hop can make it cool.”

It was, of course, technically possible for individual participants to exaggerate their carbon reductions, though Climate Culture’s staff — and the software they created — monitored the accumulating claims for anything suspicious.

Still, when SmartPower and Climate Culture begin the next “America’s Greenest Campus” competition in January, they said they hoped to monitor the actual energy bills of the schools involved, to better verify the habits of contestants.

“We want to create an entire generation that is energy smart,” Mr. Keane said. “If we can get them to turn off a light bulb today, they can turn off light bulbs for their entire lives.”

Source: Climate Culture, Green Inc

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written by Fran Tracy, November 07, 2009

That is a great place to start. It was voluntary and that is the way to go.
Fran

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