Dalhousie University
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

The annual Ecolympics competition is hosted by Dalhousie University’s Green Residence Forum (GRF) in partnership with the Office of Sustainability to help reduce energy and water consumption in residences through competition and education. The energy challenge is aligned with the Atlantic University annual energy challenge.

Before the competition begins, energy and water consumption baselines are determined for all participating residences. During the two-week competition each residence is challenged to decrease their energy and water consumption and take other sustainable actions. Throughout the two weeks of the Ecolympics, sustainability will be promoted around the campus in order to educate and inform participants and campus members. On the Halifax campuses, winning residence will be determined by how much actual water and energy is reduced which is verified through metering. At the AC campus, as metering is being worked on, the winner is determined by how many commitments are signed up to by residence members on the dashboard through their facebook and how many sustainability events and people are involved. The winning residence for HFX and AC campuses gets to take home the residence trophy and other fun features such as a free movie night

The Brightest Idea Competition is run during the month of March each year. All Dalhousie Employees (Faculty and Staff) and Students are invited to submit their ideas on practical approaches to save energy and water that have not been implemented or planned on campus. The idea is to get people on campus to think about sustainability and to make observations about what is and is not happening

The ideas submitted by the public are often ideas that the Office of Sustainability has researched or are already pursuing. Including the campus in generating sustainability ideas is a way to generate public support for sustainability initiatives. Idea submissions received each year are seen as a positive impact, it demonstrates that people genuinely care about the campus enough to submit ideas as to how we can be more sustainable in terms of energy and water use. Some previous ideas include capturing waste heat from steam tunnels (a project that is currently being researched in Facilities Management) and generating electricity from gym equipment (an idea being researched for the new athletic facility).

Commuter challenge : The Commuter Challenge is a week-long event during Canadian Environment Week in which cities and workplaces compete to encourage Canadians to leave their cars at home and reward those who are walking, cycling, carpooling and taking transit. Dalhousie has participated in the Commuter Challenge since 2011. During the challenge week, participants track the distances they traveled and their mode of transportation. At the end of the week, participants receive a summary that illustrates total impact for the transportation used (calories burned, fuel saved, and CO2 emissions avoided).