Stonehill College
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

Twice per year Residence Life, in conjunction with the Environmental Stewardship Council, hosts a “Stop the Drop” campaign. This contest is conducted between all the residence halls on campus to see which hall is able to decrease its water use the most, by percent, from the prior month.

In the fall of 2013, Holy Cross Center decreased their water usage by a remarkable 30%, and overall consumption in the residence halls dropped by 161,432 gallons during the month of October. Holy Cross Center won again in the fall of 2014 by decreasing their water consumption by 16%, which is nearly 35,000 gallons in one month in just this one residence hall.

Recyclemania, a friendly competition for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities on campus. During the 2014 competition, 461 colleges and universities nationwide recovered 89.1 million pounds of organic and recyclable materials.

In the Grand Champion category, Stonehill recycled 29.29% of all our waste. For the Per Capita Classic category, Stonehill recycled the equivalent of 26.51 lbs. of material/person. In the Gorilla competition, Stonehill recycled a total of 82,420 lbs. of materials during the 8 weeks of competition.

Grab the Green is a campaign first initiated by by a small group of students to encourage faculty, staff and students to use reusable to-go containers, instead of plastic, disposable ones. The week prior to the even, a table is set up outside the main cafeteria promoting the use of reusable containers and providing a limited number of them for free. During “Grab the Green” week no disposable to-go containers available, instead reusable to-go containers were provided and given to students to use. In the fall of 2012, 63,219 disposable containers were used. After the fall 2013 campaign, only 50,971 disposable containers had been used in the same time period. The campaign in 2013 resulted in a reduction 20% or 12,248 disposable containers. As a follow up to the Grab the Green Week, disposable containers were measured again in January 2014 to determine if the change in behavior was long lasting. The comparison of January 2013 vs. January 2014 clearly showed the campaign has been successful and will be continued in the years to come. In January 2013 18,888 disposable containers were used, while in January 2014 only 16,960 disposable containers were used. Grab the Green week now occurs once per semester to further the campaign to reduce the usage of disposable to-go containers.