Overall Rating Silver - expired
Overall Score 50.39
Liaison Stephen Ellis
Submission Date July 24, 2013
Executive Letter Download

STARS v1.2

Boston University
ER-2: Student Sustainability Outreach Campaign

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 5.00 / 5.00 Dennis Carlberg
Associate Vice President for Sustainability
BU Sustainability
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution hold a campaign that meets the criteria for this credit?:
Yes

The name of the campaign(s):
"Join the Challenge" and "RecycleMania"

A brief description of the campaign(s):

The University created “Join the Challenge” to engage all students, faculty, staff, and alumni in a competition to reduce their environmental footprints. The competition is between all the schools and colleges on campus. Everyone competes through carbonrally.com, which provides the monthly carbon footprint metrics and per-capita totals for each school or college’s CO2 reductions and determines the winner. Scoring is done at the end of each month and the school or college that reduces its carbon footprint the most for that month wins a prize specifically related to the month's challenge.

RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction in their campus communities. Over an 8 week period, from early February to early April, schools report recycling and trash data which are then ranked according to who recycles the most. RecycleMania helps highlight BU’s waste reduction achievements, and compares us to more than 550 schools nationwide.


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

Through "Join the Challenge" we have been able to engage over 11,000 participants in the BU community in behavioral change activities. The campaign is open to all members of the community who can accept as many challenges as they can in order to reduce their carbon footprint. Since BU launched Join the Challenge in 2010, carbonrally estimates that collectively through our sustainable actions, we have reduced our CO2 emissions by 168.15 tons.

During the RecycleMania competition we track our recycling progress with a large graphic placed in the student union. Compost, paper, cardboard, and bottles and cans recycling rates are tracked for each week and totaled over the 8 weeks to see how we have improved waste diversion compared to previous years.


The website URL where information about the sustainability outreach campaign(s) is available:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:

URL where information on RecycleMania can be found:
http://www.bu.edu/sustainability/what-you-can-do/events/recyclemania/


The information presented here is self-reported. While AASHE staff review portions of all STARS reports and institutions are welcome to seek additional forms of review, the data in STARS reports are not verified by AASHE. If you believe any of this information is erroneous or inconsistent with credit criteria, please review the process for inquiring about the information reported by an institution or simply email your inquiry to stars@aashe.org.