Our Initatives
Sustainability Pledge Drive
The WPI Student Green Team held a pledge drive at the fountain on November 4th. These were simple every day green solutions for our students, staff, and faculty to take a closer look at and pledge to follow. Check out pictures from this event! You can join our Student Green Team on campus by sending out an e-mail to studentgreenteam@wpi.edu.
Become a member of our WPI Green Team Facebook Page in order to find out more about meeting times and events happening around campus.
WPI Earth Day's Sustainability Poster Competition
As part of the 2009 Earth Day Celebration at WPI, the President's Task Force along with the Environmental Studies Program sponsored a sustainability-themed poster competition lauched by President Berkey on April 22nd, in the Gordon Library. Congraulations to the winning groups, who were rewarded with a prize of $250 each:
Category: Technological Responses to a problem associated with greening or sustainability
Project: Generation of ethanol and fusel alcohols from lignocellulosic material
Students: Jeff Swana and Nick Dufour
Category: Interdisciplinary projects with a focus on socio-technical dimensions of social or environmental sustainability
Project: Social Entrepreneurship at Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Students: Jillian McMillen, Divya Mathew, and Dave Mullen
East Hall is WPI's new sustainable, award-winning residence hall. "The most exciting aspect of the building is that it's a showcase of sustainable design – from the green roof to the incorporation of energy saving features throughout the building. The building sets a new standard for student residences. East Hall is a living-learning laboratory to educate students and the WPI community about the important role each individual can play in preserving the environment for present and future generations. In this sense, East Hall fully realizes WPI's motto of 'Lehr und Kunst,' as a place where theory and practice will be explored in the areas of sustainable design and sustainability." -Philip Clay, WPI's dean of students
Precyclemania is a WPI competition to promote recycling on campus before Recyclemania 2009. Different Resident Hall and Greek Houses participated, taking weekly measures for a period of 4 weeks. Winners got U$300 in prizes. Recyclemania is a nationwide competition between colleges and universities with a purpose of promoting waste reduction and recycling to campus communities. WPI is participating in this 10-week period, during which schools report recycling and trash data to a national clearing house. Institutions are then ranked according to which institution collects the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, least amount of trash per capital, and the highest recycling rate. National rankings can be found by clicking on "results" at http://www.recyclemaniacs.org /overview.htm. Since the start of the competition, WPI has outranked both Harvard and MIT in the Massachusetts competition! Our students are making the competition even more exciting by pitting resident halls against each other to see who are the best recyclers!
In August 2008, WPI announced a partnership with Zipcar-- the world's largest provider of cars on demand by the hour or day. This new partnership allowed WPI to provide Zipcars to WPI faculty, staff, and students as an environmentally friendly alternative to keeping a car on campus. "At WPI, we are aware of the impact our students' transportation choices have on our campus, the Worcester community, and the environment as a whole," said Janet Begin Richardson, WPI's vice president for student affairs and campus life. "By partnering with Zipcar, we have one more tool in our kit to encourage students to leave their personally owned vehicles at home during the school year, while teaching them to make sustainable transportation choices that we hope will extend beyond their college years."
Three solar powered walkway lights were installed at WPI's Alumni Field in early September. The lights contain a solar panel which charges a battery located in its base in order to operate LED lighting at night. "There was a concern about student safety in some of the pathways leading to the Alumni Field from Harrington Auditorium. It was less expensive to purchase and install the solar power lights than installing our campus standard lights and having to run electrical power in those locations. The solar lights are similar in appearance to our standard polls, as they have the same fixture," said Fred DiMauro, assistant VP for WPI Facilities.
Maintained by webmaster@wpi.eduLast modified: November 17, 2009 14:12:13