There has been a lot of talk recently about energy conservation. You may have heard the recommendations -- walk to work, turn off your computer, use energy-efficient bulbs. But many of us pay little attention to that sort of talk. We shrug our collective shoulders and go back to filling up the tanks in our SUVs.
But College students Lauren Ludi and Caroline McCraw found a way to drive the point home. The two first-year students are running the Hoos Unplugged energy conservation competition currently taking place between the McCormick and Alderman dormitory residents.
Both students have long been interested in environmental issues. Ludi said much of her passion came from her father.
"He's really into nature," she said, "and I would always go hiking and camping with him."
McCraw, the Conservation Advocate for her dorm, has been involved in a number of conservation organizations.
In accordance with their environmental interests, the two decided to take "Designing a Sustainable Future," a University seminar taught by P. Paxton Marshall, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and one of that department's associate deans.
Marshall, too, has been working with conservation for some time.
"I lived through the energy crises of the 70s," he said, "so I got involved, teaching some in this area, being involved in community activities and things like that."
But it wasn't long before the issue lost some of its ability to draw attention.
"In the 80s," Marshall recalled, "oil got so cheap, and the SUV craze hit us and all that progress was lost."
Today, with oil prices skyrocketing again and increased knowledge about global warming, Marshall said interest in conservation has risen as well.
"People are realizing our lifestyle is not sustainable," he said.
Therefore, Marshall said, he designed a class to take "a broad look at the whole set of issues that we refer to as sustainability ... [and] to help students to become agents of change."
Ludi and McCraw had started to plan a different project when representatives from the University's Housing Division came to class to suggest the energy competition. The pair leapt at the idea, but their enthusiasm was tempered by news of last year's attempt.
McCraw said a group tried to do an energy competition last year between two Hereford dorms but did not manage to contact many of the organizations whose cooperation would have ensured the event's success. She and Ludi said they knew they would have to be careful, as the project's topic paper puts it, not to "step on any toes."
So the two began their project, with the goal of reducing the energy consumption in the first-year dormitories by 15 percent. While this amount may seem like a lot, McCraw said "it's a pretty common goal." When other schools -- Harvard, Pomona and Stanford, to name a few -- attempted similar competitions, she elaborated, they typically saw a drop in energy consumption per capita of about that amount.
Before the March 17 launch of the event, Ludi and McCraw spearheaded a "hype week" to raise awareness of the competition. Here, their collaboration with on-Grounds organizations helped the most. Ludi said among other groups, "Students for Environmental Action was a lot of help. They gave us volunteers for tables, helped with chalking, handed out flyers ... and Resident Staff really helped too."
The University administration did its part as well. Ludi said University Housing funded the publicity efforts, and University Dining Marketing Manager Liz Thompson was a great help, getting the message onto tabletop announcements and the Observatory Hill Dining Hall information screens.
To further keep the competition on students' minds, Ludi and McCraw said they gave out energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs at tables by O-Hill and the Lawn along with pamphlets containing tips about saving electricity. Ludi said they wanted "to encourage people to do small things, like turning off your lights when you leave the room or putting your computer to sleep when you're not using it."
She added that devices such as phone chargers should be unplugged when not in use.
"People don't think about them when they're not using them ... but that circuit's still going," she noted.
The two also worked tables at O-Hill handing out "pledge cards." People would sign the cards, which read in part "I pledge to make a conscious effort to reduce my energy consumption ... to help reduce the environmental impacts of energy production."
Whichever dorm had the most participation with the cards would win free pizza, McCraw said, and she hoped that by "getting the sense of competition going, we could make it as successful as possible."
The plan worked.
"On the first day, we printed out about 100 cards, and we ran out," McCraw said. "Groups of people were coming up and asking, 'is this where we get pledge cards?' We've run out, or come close, almost every day."
Now that the event is underway, competition is heating up. Compared to data from the same time last year, Ludi said, in the first week "the McCormick dorms had a 7 percent reduction in electricity use ... and Alderman dorms have had a 5 percent reduction."
But since then, Alderman has made a strong showing; in the second week, according to the Housing Division Web site, Alderman pulled ahead with a 7.3 percent reduction, while McCormick lagged behind, at 6.3 percent.
Marshall is pleased with the progress but said he thinks there is still room for improvement.
"We were aiming for 15 percent," he said, "so I'm still hoping that by the last week we'll get up to there."
Still, the success the project has already experienced has led to talk of the future.
"We'd like to make it an annual event, if we can," Ludi said, and "all our ideas and the work we've done can be handed down" to next year's class. McCraw added that, having already contacted the contributing organizations, "these groups will know what to do to keep [the competition] going."
Next year's Hoos Unplugged may not be in entirely the same format, though.
"There's been talk of making it into a CIO" or of running the program through an existing organization, Ludi said, explaining that the workload is a lot for two people, and many parts of the project require "direct coordination with an existing group."
But you don't have to wait until then to start conserving energy, McCraw noted, as it doesn't take a lot of effort to think of ways you could save a little here and there. For instance, "you could turn off, or even unplug, your printer," McCraw said. "I don't know about you, but I only use mine maybe once or twice a week."
It's this kind of thinking, Marshall said, that can lead to a great impact. He said a small habit or a change in behavior, "if you accumulate it through the whole society, can save a lot of energy"
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