Brown set to go green

By Cindy Dinh     11/5/09 6:00pm

In a push for more sustainable living, students will now have another, less scandalous reason to turn off their lights. The Green Dorm Initiative, which launched Wednesday, is a way for students to rate their dorm and receive incentives based on their levels of environmental friendliness. The Green Dorm Initiative committee, part of the Environmental Club, is working in conjunction with EcoReps and the Rice Student Green Building Initiative to encourage students to assess their current behavior and reward them for adopting more environmentally friendly practices, GDI committee leader Nicole Kwan said.

"The concept is to recognize individual green efforts and give an incentive for people to change their lifestyle to be more environmentally friendly," Kwan, a Baker College EcoRep, said.

The pilot program launched Wednesday for students at Brown College lasts until Thanksgiving Break. If successful, the program will expand to other colleges next semester, Environmental Club co-President Becca Sagastegui said. Sagastegui, a Sid Richardson College EcoRep, said Brown was chosen based on diversity of room type, which includes doubles and quads, and general interest from the student body.

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Brown EcoRep Denver Greene said he is looking forward to motivating more students to take up this initiative.

"I want the students of Brown to make an attempt to be more environmentally friendly," Greene, a Brown senior, said. "I personally talk to people about easy things they can do around campus, like making sure to use reusable dishes and cups in the servery and to throw waste in a recycling bin where applicable, rather than the trash."

Students who sign up for the program will rate their dorm room by filling out an online form at www.ruf.rice.edu/enviclub/gdi.html that assesses their current use of electricity, recycling, disposable materials, laundry practices, air conditioning controls, water usage and types of appliances in the room. Within each area, students are awarded points for green activities, such as taking shorter showers or washing only full loads of laundry, Kwan said.

"Everything you said 'no' to, you can improve on," she said. "It acts as a standard for what a green room really means."

For the first 20 days after signing up, students must log their green-living activities, such as their estimated total shower time, air-conditioning temperature or whether their computer was turned off at night.

"[Logging information every day will] keep students thinking about it," Kwan said. "It's not just a one-time deal, but a lifestyle."

Sagastegui, a Sid junior, said she hopes students who sometimes overlook everyday practices such as remembering to power down computers at night will be more conscious of their actions. The use of the daily activities log can serve as a reminder.

"If you're thinking about it on a daily basis, it's more likely to become habit," Sagastegui said.

The GDI is based on the honor code, Greene said, since students will be logging their individual activities. EcoReps will also come for an initial inspection to help students figure out the sign-up process.

After the 20-day trial, EcoReps will visit students' rooms for a final inspection and to officially certify the rooms.

The total score at the end of the trial will determine if students' rooms are certified in gold, silver or bronze categories. Rice Student Green Building Initiative helped determine the point system, which is based off of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design categories, Sagastegui said.

As an added incentive to adopt more sustainable practices, students will receive prizes based on their rating. These include a reusable cloth bag for bronze, steel water bottles for silver and $15 in Tetra Points for gold.

"We want to reward students who are living in a more sustainable lifestyle and recognize they are doing something right," Kwan said.

In addition, students who attain at least the bronze level will receive a Grasshopper Card, similar to the Hedgehopper Card, which includes discounts to green businesses and restaurants, Sagastegui said.

The idea for the Green Dorm Initiative came from Jeremy Caves (Wiess '09) former co-president of the Environmental Club, who wanted to push this idea as well as the EcoRep program, Kwan said. The EcoRep program includes one student from each college who has a $1,000 budget provided by Housing and Dining devoted to green initiatives, such as the purchase of recycling bins, power strips and compact fluorescent light bulbs.

"It isn't necessary that everyone become an extreme activist, but if you have less of a negative impact on the environment than you normally would, I will be happy," Greene said. "All we can ask is that you do your best.

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