From January 15th to February 11th, the Williston Northampton School was a participant in the Green Cup Challenge. The Green Cup Challenge is a school to school competition to see which school could save the most energy during the four weeks, with the hope to instill sustainable habits in the students. At Williston, the Sustainable Life Club also narrows the competition to make it a dorm to dorm competition. Although Williston’s data will not be processed and posted until later this week, the final data for the dorm competitions are in!

The amount of energy used per week by dorm is compared with the amount of energy used from a baseline of three years during the month of January and February. Conant and Sawyer had switched their heating system last year, which helped  it use less electricity. Although, the amount of enthusiasm in the dorms, was supported with the data throughout the competition.

The school made a HUGE improvement from only four dorms in the first two weeks that were saving energy (Memorial Hall, Conant and Sawyer, Hathaway, and Logan) to seven dorms in the last week! Below are the top three dorms for each week.

Week 1  First place: Conant and Sawyer   Second place: Memorial Hall     Third place: Logan

Week 2  First place: Conant and Sawyer   Second place: Memorial Hall      Third place: Logan

Week 3   First place: Conant and Sawyer   Second place: Memorial Hall     Third place: 194

Week 4   First place: Conant and Sawyer   Second place: Memorial Hall      Third place: Reed

Conant and Sawyer had held on strong for all four weeks as first place. They will continue to have possession of the Green Cup Flag until March break. Memorial Hall had earned second place, continually saving energy for all four weeks. Combining the amount of energy saved from Memorial Hall and Conant and Sawyer, a total of 3,480 lbs of carbon dioxide was saved throughout the competition. Logan and 194 continued to switch back and forth for third place throughout the competition, as well. Reed, or the day student’s building for the competition, gained an honorable mention from averaging 27 kwh saved to 147 kwh saved in the last week.

All of the dorms in the last week (excluding data that was transcribed incorrectly from Hathaway), the school had saved a total of 1,076 lbs of carbon dioxide.

Although we saw a tremendous amount of enthusiasm in the dorms to save energy, the especially cold month may contribute to the loss of energy in certain dorms. With the new solar lamps distributed to each dorm, we hope that this enthusiasm is still harnessed after the Green Cup Challenge, and that students are inspired to help save energy outside of the competition as well.

The final results for Williston, in the school to school competition, will be released later this week, so keep an eye out!