Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 56.91
Liaison Natalie Hayes
Submission Date July 9, 2014
Executive Letter Download

STARS v2.0

Bentley University
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 4.00 / 4.00 Natalie Hayes
Associate Director of Sustainability
Office of Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Has the institution held at least one sustainability-related outreach campaign directed at students within the previous three years that has yielded measurable, positive results in advancing sustainability?:
Yes

Has the institution held at least one sustainability-related outreach campaign directed at employees within the previous three years that has yielded measurable, positive results in advancing sustainability?:
Yes

The name of the campaign (1st campaign):
The Blackout Challenge

A brief description of the campaign (1st campaign):

This is a month-long competition among all residence halls to reduce energy consumption compared to their building's own baseline. The baseline is calculated as a weekly average based on each building's electricity usage in the month prior to the Challenge. For instance, the baseline for October's Blackout Challenge is calculated as an average of two weeks of September's usage. While efficiency upgrades reduce energy consumption in one building without any effort on the students' part, we control for these differences in infrastructure by comparing the reductions to the building's own baseline in the same year. The baseline calculation also allows us to control for the number of occupants or the percentage occupancy in each building, since electricity is not compared on a per-capita basis or as a percentage of the campus's total usage.


A brief description of the measured positive impact(s) of the campaign (1st campaign):

The main goal of the Blackout Challenge is to create behavioral change once students appreciate how their activities are affecting their building's energy consumption. For example, leaving your TV on, your laptop and cell phone chargers plugged in, and your A/C on with moderate weather all waste energy unnecessarily. Our hope is that the Blackout Challenge gets students thinking about reasonable usage by getting into the habit of turning lights & electronics off when they are not in use, opening windows instead of turning on HVAC units, etc. Additionally, the savings from reducing energy consumption go back to students through annual building renovations and improvements.


The website URL where information about the campaign is available (1st campaign):
The name of the campaign (2nd campaign):
Single-stream recycling

A brief description of the campaign (2nd campaign):

The Office of Sustainability created a major outreach campaign to educate students, faculty and staff on the university's single-stream recycling program. The education campaign has included: training for freshmen at orientation and First Week, training of RAs who then disseminate information to their residents, provision of recycling information to each residential room on campus via RAs, use of Facebook and Twitter, work by Eco-Reps to educate their peers about recycling in residence halls and dining areas, lunch & learn meetings set up with campus departments to educate faculty and staff on the recycling program.


A brief description of the measured positive impact(s) of the campaign (2nd campaign):

This campaign has resulted in an increase of recycling equal to 3 tons per month over a two year period.


The website URL where information about the campaign is available (2nd campaign):
A brief description of other outreach campaigns, including measured positive impacts:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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