Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 65.20
Liaison Denice Koljonen
Submission Date Feb. 17, 2022

STARS v2.2

Boston College
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 4.00 / 4.00 Bruce Dixon
Sustainability and Energy Specialist
Facilities
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Has the institution held a sustainability-related outreach campaign during the previous three years that was directed at students and yielded measurable, positive results in advancing sustainability?:
Yes

Has the institution held a sustainability-related outreach campaign during the previous three years that was directed at employees and yielded measurable, positive results in advancing sustainability?:
Yes

Name of the campaign:
Recyclemania

A brief description of the campaign:

Campus Race to Zero Waste (formerly known as Recyclemenia): This is a competition that takes place in the United States universities participating in the northeast and in New England. The competition requires that schools keep track of their waste and the winning schools get national recognition and awards. The program lasts for 8 weeks, running from February to April. BC's Office of Sustainability works on this program with BC students and administration. Students from the Office of Sustainability worked on communicating and monitoring the program.

During the campaign, we held an interactive sustainable competition called Save OHNO.
https://www.saveohno.org/competitions/boston-college-2021


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

In 2021 BC came in 36th in overall diversion out of 104 participating institutions. Our diversion average for the competition was 37.4%. We also ranked 12th in the Carnegie Per Capita Classification


Name of the campaign (2nd campaign):
Save OHNO

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

During the campaign, we held an interactive sustainable competition called Save OHNO. OHNO is a fictitious grandchild of the students from the future. OHNO sends a letter to the past informing students that climate change has made life on earth difficult with rolling blackouts daily, food shortages, and extreme weather events. The goals of the students are to create teams, act sustainably, and post images of their actions. The winning team receives prizes for being the most sustainable.

https://www.saveohno.org/competitions/25/feed


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

According to the Save OHNO programmers monitoring the BC posts, the students' actions saved the following:

51 Avoided a straw/ used their own mug
48 washed clothes on cold, and/or dried on a rack
46 calculated their carbon footprint or planned a trip with public transport
45 Picked up trash/ recycling or composting
33 turned off or unplugged a device
30 went meatless for a meal
56 Enjoyed a green space.

76,000 gallons of water were saved, mostly from plant-based eating.
670 lb of carbon dioxide emissions (or equivalent) saved from eating vegetarian and washing clothes efficiently + all the habits and spin-offs from the other actions, such as lights out, recycling, etc.


A brief description of other sustainability-related outreach campaigns:

- Game Day Ambassador: Recycling and Compost campaign at sporting events.
- Volunteer Fair: all student groups, including sustainability-related groups, have tables to recruit members. Groups include Eco Pledge and Real Food. Over 400 students signed up to be members of sustainability-related student groups.
- Harvest Festival and Earth Week Event/ Fair: Event held to bring greater awareness to the student body of the various sustainability initiatives that occur on campus during the Fall and Spring semesters.


Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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