Stanford University
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

RecycleMania is a national 8-week intercollegiate competition and benchmarking tool for higher education recycling programs. Each year during RecycleMania, Stanford reports recycling and trash tonnage and attempts to surpass other schools in categories such as total tons recycled, waste diversion rate, waste minimization, and per capita recycling. All members of the campus community are encouraged to participate and evaluate their own waste and recycling habits during this annual competition through activities and trainings offered by Stanford's Office of Sustainability and Peninsula Sanitary Services, Inc (PSSI)/Stanford Recycling Center. For instance, Stanford offers trainings in conjunction with this campaign entitled "Best Practices in Waste Reduction," and incentives are provided to encourage participation. In 2018, Stanford staff offered 12 total waste trainings to the Stanford community and trained over 150 people. Stanford also offers free tours of its on-site recycling center and off-site composting facility to the campus community.

During the competition, the Office of Sustainability also partners with the Department of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation (DAPER) to host two sustainability game day challenges, where it engages students, staff and fans to recycle and compost. Through initiatives like these, the season-wide diversion rate for Stanford Stadium increased to 42.65% during the 2018 football season, up from 12% in 2015.

Below are Stanford's final 2018 results in each of the RecycleMania categories:

Gorilla: 2 out of 229
Per Capita Recycling: 14 out of 228
Grand Champion: 55 out of 170
Waste Minimization: 164 out of 179

Throughout the campaign, Stanford also measures its impact on the campus community through its online engagement platform, My Cardinal Green. The platform tracks individual actions related to environmental conservation and has more than 3,000 active users. 2018 was the first year that campaigns were executed through the program, and nearly 800 actions were taken specific to the campaign during that time. Visit: http://sustainable.stanford.edu/my-cardinal-green

The annual Cardinal Green Buildings campaign is one of the longest-standing Cardinal Green resource conservation campaigns. Stanford operates and maintains hundreds of campus buildings. While advanced systems ensure these buildings operate efficiently, a critical tool in helping further reduce Stanford’s energy use is the collective action of campus building occupants. For years, Stanford’s building managers have helped the university realize significant energy savings through the success of programs like the annual Winter Closure and the Cardinal Green Office Program. In partnership with Zone Management and Facilities Energy Management, these efforts were joined under the Cardinal Green Buildings campaign in order to call attention to the great work building leads are doing and to further engage the campus community in sustainability. Thus, the Cardinal Green Buildings campaign now helps promote Winter Closure both by working with building managers to curtail heating and cooling in buildings over the two-week holiday period and by promoting individual participation from students, staff and faculty to ensure that all appliances and electronics are unplugged during the building curtailment.

In 2015 and 2016, additional programs were introduced under the Cardinal Green Buildings campaign umbrella, such as Thanksgiving Closure--a four-day shutdown over the Thanksgiving hoiliday--and the Space Heater Swap, which encourages community members to turn in electric space heaters to the Office of Sustainability in exchange for a Sustainable Stanford-branded fleece jacket. These programs remain critical and popular elements of the campaign today. In 2017 and 2018, these components were augmented by a dorm energy challenge facilitated through student volunteers, who went door-to-door to remind their peers to unplug and turn off appliances before leaving their residence for the holidays. Almost 50 volunteers reached more than 3000 residents, with energy savings of more than 10% compared to the previous year in buildings that were canvassed.

In 2018, a total of 159 buildings participated in the Cardinal Green Buildings campaign to save:
• 1.3 million kilo-watt hours of electricity
• 2,458 million BTU of thermal energy saved (combination of hot water and process steam savings)
• 298,000 ton-hours of chilled water savings
• $427,000 in operating savings
• 953 metric tons of CO2 emissions avoided

The 2018 Thanksgiving Closure resulted in an additional $131,000 in resource savings on top of the results above.

Office of Sustainability offers a series of campaigns aimed at conserving resources on campus as part of its Cardinal Green program. Each campaign offers the opportunity for students, staff and faculty to directly contribute to sustainability efforts, focused seasonally around energy, water, and waste. The energy and waste campaigns are discussed above, and the annual water campaign promotes native plant restoration volunteer opportunities. During each campaign, a specific set of actions are promoted in My Cardinal Green related to the relevant topic area.

Year-long programs such as the Cardinal Green Labs, Cardinal Green Events, and Cardinal Green Office Program establish a community of sustainability champions who can track and measure results on an ongoing basis.