University of Louisville
EN-5: Outreach Campaign
| Status | Score | Responsible Party |
|---|---|---|
|
4.00 / 4.00 |
Justin
Mog Assistant to the Provost for Sustainability Initiatives Office of the Provost |
Has the institution held a sustainability-related outreach campaign during the previous three years that was directed at students and yielded measurable, positive results in advancing sustainability?:
Has the institution held a sustainability-related outreach campaign during the previous three years that was directed at employees and yielded measurable, positive results in advancing sustainability?:
Name of the campaign:
A brief description of the campaign:
Ecolympics is UofL's biggest annual sustainability outreach and behavior change campaign, leveraging the power of competition, fun, and prizes to encourage students, faculty, and staff to take action for sustainability. Ecolympics is held for eight weeks every February and March and involves two fun sustainability competitions to get you engaged in saving our one green planet. Participation is encouraged through a coordinated promotional campaign involving social media, blogs, newsletters, flyers, word-of-mouth, tabling and other special programming.
Students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to post their sustainable actions to social media and tag @UofLSustainable or to submit them through an online form in order to be entered to win the grand prize (usually a restored bicycle), or one of eight sustainability-themed weekly prize baskets.
Campus Race To Zero Waste
A friendly annual competition among North American universities. During this 8 week period, UofL competes to reduce waste, increase recycling & composting, and raise conservation awareness across all three campuses! Students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to:
1. REDUCE & RECYCLE! Help the Cards to victory by avoiding disposables (bring your own mug, bottle, plate, etc.) and fully utilizing UofL’s amazingly easy, single-stream recycling system that lets you recycle everything in the same bin, everywhere on campus: all types of plastic, paper, cardboard, metal, and glass!
2. COMPOST! We collect food wastes for composting from The Ville Grill, SAC Marketplace, and other campus dining locations and adding those numbers to UofL's organics recycling totals! Participants can also compost their food scraps and soiled paper products in the compost bins at the Garden Commons, the Urban & Public Affairs Garden, or the UofL Community Composting Project.
3. RECYCLE E-WASTE! For a month, we set up special collection points across campus at which students, faculty, and staff can drop off any of the following types of electronics for recycling: all computers, monitors, televisions, printers, copiers, scanners, servers, networking equipment, fax machines, telephones and cellphones, RAM/memory, hard drives, battery backups, and peripherals such as keyboards, mice, speakers, AC adapters, mixed computer cables/wires, batteries, light bulbs, and ink/toner cartridges. The UofL Sustainability Council partners with UofL's eSports Club who act as ambassadors for the drive and volunteer to help people wipe data and remove hardware for reuse.
Dorm Drawdown
Each spring on-campus residents are encouraged to compete to reduce electricity use in UofL residence halls. This campaign began with UofL's participation in Campus Conservation Nationals 2012, the first nationwide electricity reduction competition on university campuses, with over 150 campuses and 250,000 students across North America participating. It continues today as an internal competition among all the on-campus residence halls. Each spring, for a three week period, all of the halls compete to achieve the greatest possible reductions in electricity usage. Four of the halls have Building Dashboards offering real-time energy use data, while the rest compete with manual meter readings. Prizes are awarded to individual Conservation Heroes every week during the competition and to the winning residence hall at the end.
A brief description of the measured positive impact(s) of the campaign:
Ecolympics 2021 (1/29 – 3/27/21):
Lockdown Drawdown Results:
Students in all 7 residence halls helped save a total of 2,212 kilowatt-hours of electricity (1.71% reduction), despite a polar vortex, during our three-week Lockdown Drawdown from February 5-25. That's equivalent to preventing the climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions from:
• 3,881 miles of driving an average car;
• Burning 176 gallons of gasoline;
• Burning 1,723 pounds of coal;
• Charging 199,457 smartphones; or
• The amount of carbon sequestered by 2 acres worth of U.S. forests in a year!
Our congratulations go out to Bettie Johnson Hall, which won 1st place by reducing their electricity consumption 34%! Louisville Hall finished 2nd with a 5.6% reduction; and Miller Hall claimed bronze with a 2.9% savings.
Campus Race to Zero Waste 2021 Results (out of 209 participating schools):
• In the Diversion category, UofL was not quite able to match our 2020 performance, but we held our own! Out of 209 schools, UofL finished #1 in the ACC, #2 in the state, and #21 in the nation, with an overall Recycling Rate of 45.614% during the 8-week competition from January 31st to March 27th, 2021. Congrats to our Louisville neighbors, JCTC, who defeated us with their impressive recycling prowess, finishing 5th in the nation with a recycling rate of 65.918%! Full Results here.
• In the Per Capita Classic, having recycled 4.990 lbs/person, UofL finished in 2nd place in Kentucky and improved our national ranking to 73rd.
• In 2021, after rolling out a new customer-facing composting collection in UofL Dining, UofL continued to improve our dominance in composting, finishing 1st in Kentucky and 15th in the country in the Food Organics category, with 70.00 points.
• In the all-important Waste Minimization category, UofL seriously upped our game from 2020, finishing 2nd in the state, with total waste production down to just 18.32 lbs/person over 8 weeks.
• Congratulations to all of our eight weekly Ecolympics 2021 winners who took an incredible variety of creative green actions throughout the Campus Race to Zero Waste: Leah Hazelwood, Anam Ahmed, Emily Nunez, Rebecca Eaton, Megan Cooper, Stacy Henley, Mimi Conti, and Megan E. Miller. Each one received a unique sustainability-themed prize pack. Our Grand Prize winner was Envirome Institute administrative assistant, Emily Coleman, who inspired all of us by sharing over 200 sustainable actions throughout the competition! She pedaled home on her prize: a slick, Cardinal-colored Dahon folding bicycle! All winners received an experiential prize on Earth Day 2021 - an insider's sustainability tour of UofL's LEED Gold Student Rec Center, including a climb up to the roof to check out the solar water heating system.
Name of the campaign (2nd campaign):
A brief description of the campaign (2nd campaign):
During five weeks at the start of the fall semester, UofL's Sustainability Council hosts a Cards Commuter Challenge to leverage the power of competition, fun, and prizes to encourage students, faculty, and staff to explore alternatives to driving alone to campus. Participation is encouraged through a coordinated promotional campaign involving social media, blogs, newsletters, flyers, word-of-mouth, tabling and other special programming. Participants are encouraged to create a free account on the Cardinal Directions platform (http://directions.louisville.edu/) which allows for carpool-matching and displays ALL of user's transportation options in one map-based platform. Users can easily compare not only routes, mileage, and time, but the costs, carbon emissions, and calories burned by each mode (walking, biking, transit, driving, carpooling). Throughout the Challenge, we actively encourage students, faculty, and staff to try alternative modes, and log their trips on Cardinal Directions in order to be entered to win one of the weekly prizes or the grand prize drawing. Details about the most recent Challenge are at http://louisville.edu/sustainability/events/cards-commuter-challenge-2021
A brief description of the measured positive impact(s) of the campaign (2nd campaign):
From Aug. 30 – Sept. 30, 2021 Cards Commuter Challenge participants logged 1,094 trips on foot, bike, bus, or car/vanpool, covering 11,246 miles, preventing 8,137 pounds of carbon pollution, saving $5,505, & burning 101,600 calories. Congrats to ULPD staff, Jessica Stivers, who logged the most trips (71 by bus) and to our Grand Prize $250 raffle winner: Valeryia Kukharskaya, a REACH student assistant, who logged 416 miles over 32 carpool commutes, preventing 169 pounds of carbon pollution.
FINAL RESULTS:
Participants: 38
Trips: 1,094
Distance: 11,246 mi
CO2 Saved: 8,137 lbs
Money Saved: $5,505
Calories Burned: 101,600
A brief description of other sustainability-related outreach campaigns:
Green Tips are published weekly in the UofL Today daily email sent to all UofL employees; and occasionally included in the Student News & Events feed, and the UofL Sustainability blog and social media channels. https://louisville.edu/sustainability/past-green-tips/
Additional documentation to support the submission:
Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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.