Portland State University
ER-2: Student Sustainability Outreach Campaign

Campus Conservation Nationals (CCN) is the largest nationwide electricity and water reduction competition on college and university campuses. PSU has hosted a challenge since winter 2011 and joined the national CCN campaign in winter 2013. As of winter 2014, seven out of ten PSU residence halls will compete to reduce electricity and water usage. EcoReps hosted events for student residents such as a candlelight dinner in Victor’s dining hall, Blackout Game Night, a Conservation Conversation with tea and snacks, an e-waste drive, and many others. Partnerships with other student organizations, like Tea with TED and Take Back the Tap, were formed and strengthened through event co-sponsorship. Baseline water and electricity usage data were submitted for a 2-week period preceding the competition window, and then weekly electricity and water meter readings were put into an online dashboard provided by CCN for each of the three competition weeks. **** Recyclemania Campaign: Brief description of the campaign: PSU participates in a variety of campaigns, as you will read about in the other credit forms. We have chosen to focus on our recycling campaign for this credit. If more information is needed to receive full points, we can provide additional information. PSU enters the Recyclemania competition (www.recyclemania.com) each year. This is a ten-week competition between universities across the country to see who can collect the largest amounts of recyclables, the least amount of trash, and achieve higher recycling rates. The competition included the entire campus, and outreach happened through weekly updates in the campus newspaper, tabling, themed events, websites, residence hall and dining specific outreach, sharing results and tips, and other means to target behavior change in regards to recycling and waste minimization.

Campus Conservation Nationals: http://buildingdashboard.net/pdx/#/pdx// http://www.pdx.edu/sustainability/news/green-campus-spotlight-conserving-win Student-led programming in the 3 participating residence halls yielded the following reductions, compared to the baseline period: Number of kWh saved: 1st: Broadway 17,933 kWh 11% reduction 2nd: Ondine 4,869 kWh 6.6% reduction 3rd: Stephen Epler 1,044 kWh 4.6% reduction Total 23,906 kWh | 10,900 lbs CO2 | $1,912 Number of gallons of water saved: 1st: Stephen Epler 45,650 gallons 18.9% reduction 2nd: Ondine 20,160 gallons 2.9% reduction 3rd: Broadway 9793 gallons 1.8% increase Total 56,018 | $854.60 Recyclemania: Recyclemania increased awareness of the recycling and waste management programs on campus, how to recycle correctly, and how to produce less waste on campus. Open reporting of results and data were made available to the campus community. The entire student population as well as staff and faculty participated. We finished 45th out of 148 universities in the Waste Minimization category with an average of 34.8 pounds of waste generated per person over the 10 week competition. That represents a reduction in per capita waste generation of 11.13 lbs from the 2007-08 campaign. We also finished 41st in Food Service Organics standings with 2.38 pounds of organics composted per person.

http://psuvanguard.com/news/psu-ecoreps-prepare-for-campus-conservation-nationals/ http://www.pdx.edu/news/psu-competes-national-conservation-challenge http://www.pdx.edu/sustainability/solutions-blog/conservation-conversation