How Big Is Your Carbon Footprint?
Sustainability Web site launches today
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Select from the topics below to hear Dennis Carlberg, BU’s director of sustainability, talk about how he hopes the launch of a new Web site will get people involved in reducing BU’s carbon footprint.
If using your own coffee mug instead of paper cups for just a week can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than a pound, imagine how much you could shave off in a year.
Actually, relying on your imagination will no longer be necessary, thanks to a new partnership between the University and CarbonRally.com, a Web site that allows students, faculty, staff, and alumni to not only track changes in their carbon footprints, but compete against one another to see who can be the greenest.
The program is one of several featured on Sustainability @ BU’s new Web site, which will be launched today by Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore at an event in the GSU Link from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The sustainability Challenge page offers a competition among all BU schools and colleges: 20 teams sign up for up to three challenges a week, and the school that does best every month is awarded.
All sustainability-related student organizations on campus have been invited, and partners such as ZipCar, Solar Road Trip, Save-That-Stuff, and Carbonrally will offer information, discounts, and opportunities to get involved. Free stainless steel mugs will be handed out to the first 500 people to sign up for the Challenge, and the school or college with the highest participation will win a bean burrito party.
Dennis Carlberg, the University’s director of sustainability, has great expectations for the site.
“We hope that people will gasp at the magnitude of the challenge,” he says, referring to an animation on the site’s homepage that displays the amount of trash, water, and light produced by BU each year. “And we hope they will read about what the University is doing and what they can do to address it.”
Edward A. Brown can be reached at ebrown@bu.edu.
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