First year students have been set a challenge: In emails sent out to residents of North and Massell Quads by their respective Area Coordinators, Habibah Braimah and Jay MacDuffie, students in both first-year quads were pitted against each other to see which quad could be the most sustainable.

According to the email sent out by MacDuffie, Oct. 15 marked the beginning of a month-long challenge for each quad to reduce its energy consumption and “increase awareness on our usage of energy and encourage us to be more conscious about the choices we make and how it impacts our environment.”

The University’s Sustainability Program, directed by Manager Mary Fischer, teamed up with the Department of Community Living to launch this new event that both sides hope will kick-start a positive change in students’ lifestyles. The Sustainability Competition arrives on the heels of another brand new energy initiative — “Turn it Off” Days — that was introduced over the summer. “Turn it Off” Days aim to reduce the University’s energy consumption — through the conservation of air conditioning, in particular — on peak energy days. These efforts are just the beginning of the University’s efforts toward sustainability; in an email to the Justice, Fischer wrote that the University is “actively investigating adding more solar installations to campus; we are evaluating several energy efficiency improvements; and we are gearing up for an LED light bulb giveaway in November, for starters.”

The competition was inspired by a proposal for an energy competition by Ashley Piccirillo-Horan ’17, one of the Community Advisors in North Quad. Fischer wrote, “while I [had] been planning to hold competitions already, starting with the first-year quads was a great coincidence spearheaded by Ashley and a few other CAs from North,” adding that “another reason it works well is because it’s crucial to educate and establish sustainable behavior from the moment students start their Brandeis journey. So starting with the first-year quads helps accomplish that.”

One of the incentives behind this campaign was Brandeis’s current statistics on recycling. “Our campus recycling rate is one-half of the national average. The national average is 35 to 40 percent, whereas our current rate is less than 20 percent,” Fischer noted, adding, “I’ve challenged Massell and North to strive for a 50 percent recycling rate during the competition. Why? Because we are not ‘just average’ in any way as a university, and everything we do should reflect that, especially our sustainability efforts.”

Instead of viewing these recycling results as something that is holding the University back, Fischer said that she has called for positive collaboration within the Brandeis community. “The goal is to demonstrate that by making conscious efforts to reduce our energy consumption, and to dispose of our waste the most responsible way that we can, the community can make great strides in becoming more sustainable,” Fischer said, “And of course, to show how easy it is to do so — making a few different decisions every day can really add up.”

The results from the first week of the competition indicate progress already. Fischer recorded that “both quads increased their recycling rates by almost 10 percent each the first week, and four of eight buildings reduced their average daily kilowatt-hour consumption by 10 percent or more.” Fischer went on to clarify that a kilowatt-hour “is the amount of energy it takes to power a 100-watt light bulb for 10 hours.”

The reaction from first-years has also proven generally positive: Benedikt Reynolds ’19 of Massell Quad said that the competition has made him more aware of his energy-consuming actions. “[The competition] makes me second guess whether I should keep my lights on. So, lately, I’ve been turning them off — for Mother Nature!” Reynolds added.

Nicole Porter ’19 of Massell Quad felt similarly: “I hope that it makes us all more conscious about the environment and how we affect it, especially [now that] we’re actually paying attention to ourselves,” she said.

The building with the greatest reduction in energy consumption will receive a to-be-determined, environmentally friendly prize.

On Oct. 25, MacDuffie sent out an email with the data from each building regarding recycling (measured in tons) and energy consumption (measured in average kilowatt-hours per day). Changes in recycling habits were compared to data from September, and changes in energy consumption were calculated by comparison to the daily average kwh before the competition started. Each quad recycled 21 percent of its waste, though Massell produced 0.49 tons more waste than North did. In the month of September, North had recycled 14 percent of its waste and Massell had recycled 12 percent. Concerning energy consumption, Cable Hall took the lead with a 17 percent reduction. As a whole, North used 43 percent less than its baseline of 1612 kwh, while Massell used 33 percent less than its baseline of 1324 kwh.