Tag Archives: Sustainability

Green Cup Challenge: Dorm Listings

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

Dorm by dorm competition during the four weeks

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!

Williston Earth Day!

There are some exciting things we have coming up on Williston Earth Day, which is this Thursday. Tuesday was the true Earth day, but because we don’t have classes that day we decided to make Williston Earth Day this Thursday. On Thursday at 2:45 we plan to open up the garden for the first time this spring and anyone can come and help out. Also on Thursday the school store will be offering a discount on re-usable items like water bottles, re-usable shopping bags, and re-usable mugs. This Sunday Mr. Lorenzatti will take students on a hike up Mt. Tom.

These activities will encourage people to appreciate the environment that we live in. The water bottles and re-usable items will encourage the use of more re-usable items and mindfulness of the waste we create. The hike will show people ways that we can enjoy the world we live in. All of these activities will educate people about the ways that we as a community and as individuals can make a difference. Our goal for Earth Day is to create good sustainable habits and teach people how to give back to the Earth.

Ort Report Week 6!

 

Week 6 results
Week 6 results

This weeks Ort Report measurements are the best so far! We weighed a total of 49.6 pounds of leftovers from students’ and teachers’ plates!

As always, we look forward to improving even more. Our improvements so far show that the students have become much more aware of the impact of their waste. We look forward to setting a specific goal for diners to reach!

Ort Report Week 5!

Ort REP TO BLOG WK 5

            This week Sustainable Life Club had collected and measured a total of 77.4 pounds of food waste for the Ort Report. Last week we had a startling amount of 55.8 pounds, 20 pounds less than this week. Hopefully week four measurements will help students and faculty at Williston aim to get around 55.8 pounds or less. Overall, the average of food waste for the past five weeks have averaged to 74.64 pounds. The first week had measured around 98 pounds, so the slope is continuing on a decreasing slant (see graph).

Although Ort Report is succeeding in helping students realize their impact on the environment through their food waste on Mondays, the measurements are inconsistent. The goal of the Ort Report is to help students be aware of their impact even when measurements are not taken throughout the week and try to create a consistent habits for students and faculty. Hopefully, over the last weeks of the Second Trimester, the average will continue to lower as we become more environmentally conscious, including days beyond Monday.