All residence halls on campus are competing in an energy-and-water-conservation contest this quarter in a university-wide effort to reduce consumption.

The residence hall that reduces its energy and water usage by the greatest percentage compared to last year’s usage will win a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream party.

The Housing and Residential Education Department is sponsoring the contest in an effort to make DU more sustainable by increasing student awareness.

Energy and water consumption is being recorded in Centennial Halls, Centennial Towers, Nelson, Nagel and Johnson McFarlane Halls.

Students can compete in the contest either individually or with everyone residing in their dorm.

Students will actually be competing against those who lived in their building last year.

At the end of the quarter, the data on the energy and water usage will be tabulated for each dorm and compared to the same information collected during the same period last year.

The dorm with the greatest percent decrease will win the competition. All of the residents in the winning dorm will get to attend the ice cream party.

The residence halls are not competing head to head to see which dorm consumes the least amount of water and energy since the dorms house different numbers of people.

Also, usage is affected by the type of infrastructure that exists in each building and reflects what was available technologically at the time the building was originally built.

Johnson-McFarlane uses the least amount of energy because there is no air conditioning or kitchen units, while Nelson uses the most energy per square foot because of the ventilation system, the heating and air conditioning system and dining hall.

In the individual part of the competition, students can nominate other students they see conserving water and electricity or they can enter by pledging to do something to conserve water and electricity.

Only students living in the residence halls are eligible for the individual prizes.

Nomination and pledge forms can be found at the front desk of each dorm.

 

 

Suggestions for conserving water and energy

• Avoid using space heaters. A single space heater uses as much energy as 56 4-foot fluorescent tubes.
• Turn off the lights when leaving the room.
• Use ink-jet printers instead of laser printers. They use 95 percent less energy.
• Use laptops instead of computers. They use 90 percent less energy.
• Unplug appliances including chargers when not in use.Appliances not in use account for five percent of all domestic energy consumption.
• Take shorter showers.
• Wash full loads of laundry instead of partial loads.
• Turn off water when brushing your teeth.