 | STEP coordinators exchanged over 150 fluorescent light bulbs for incandescent bulbs on Sept. 27 as part of the "Light 4 Light" campaign. Bottom row: Brynne Lieb, Dominic Albino, Morgan Marshall , Naima Farrell, Meghan Murphy; second row: Jacqueline Gosnell, Stephanie Lake, Lily Lwamugira; third row: Rebecca Toseland, Meg Howard, Susanne Kenagy, Evan Suzuki, Sarah Jane Selig. |
Some 1,000 lights glowing throughout the campus are helping to make Yale more "green."
By trading in their incandescent light bulbs for energy-efficient fluorescent ones, Yale students are taking one small step toward making the University a sustainable campus.
The trade-in, called "Light 4 Light," is a project of the Student Taskforce for Environmental Partnership (STEP), an organization that encourages sustainable living habits on campus. It was founded in 2004 by second-year School of Forestry & Environmental Studies student Maren Haus and undergraduates Dawn Lippert '06 and Susanne Kenagy '06. It is supported by a Green Fund grant from the University's Advisory Committee on Environmental Management.
STEP aims to foster an ethic of environmental stewardship and sustainable behavior on campus through various outreach and educational campaigns. Through the organization, each residential college has two coordinators, who are paid for working five hours weekly to promote sustainability in their own college and beyond. The group works closely with Yale's new Office of Sustainability under the direction of Julie Newman (see related story).
Once a week, STEP students knock on the doors of freshmen dormitory and residential college rooms, asking their peers if they'd like to trade in their incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Since the start of the school year, some 1,000 students have opted to do so.
The ENERGY STAR-rated CFLs use one-third of the energy of incandescent bulbs and last 10 times longer, Haus notes.
"One of our goals for this year is to reduce energy use in the residential colleges by 7% compared to last year," Haus says. "One of the easiest ways to do that is to replace the incandescent light bulbs with CFLs. Most everyone is happy to make the exchange."
Many students, she adds, are impressed with the spiral shape of the CFLs, making them a "hot-demand" item. The incandescent bulbs they exchange are in turn given to the Yale Recycling office, which donates them to local charities.
The Department of Facilities has supplied the CFLs to STEP, which just recently got its second batch of 1,000 CFLs to distribute. At the moment, the organization is focusing the light exchange program on freshmen.
"We're focusing on freshmen because we want them to get into the habit of purchasing CFLs right away and to engage them in sustainable behaviors early," explains Haus. "Our goal, eventually, is to make student purchasing of CFLs part of the culture."
Some of the freshmen arrived on campus with their own CFL bulbs, and members of STEP reward them with small prizes, such as magnets or candy.
"Many of the students who bring CFLs say they did so in response to the letter all freshmen received from Julie Newman," says Haus.
In addition to the "Light for Light" project, STEP has also worked to reduce waste during student move-in and move-out days. They encourage their peers to put unwanted objects in boxes so that other students can draw from them what they might use themselves. Anything left behind is donated to campus or local community programs.
STEP has also talked with undergraduates and dining hall managers about food waste and local organic foods, and has conducted a survey of students last year to assess their perceptions of Yale's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Some 1,000 students responded to the survey.
Haus, one of the three co-directors of STEP (with Dominique Gomez '07 and Evan Suzuki '07), says that having STEP coordinators in each of the residential colleges allows for easy communication with the masters, students, dining hall workers and custodial staff in the colleges.
"The coordinators pretty much know everyone in their own college and have a direct link with people they need to communicate with," Haus says.
"We basically serve as the eyes and ears on the student level on issues of sustainability," she adds.
A recent STEP project involved posting laminated signs on students' doors. Modeled after Mastercard commercials, the signs note that there is no cost to students to turn off lights when leaving their rooms, taking their recyclables to designated bins on a weekly basis or setting their computers to the power-save mode.
And what are rewards of building a sustainable Yale? "Priceless," says the STEP-designed sign.
"That's the message we are trying to get across," says Haus. "We're seeing a lot of students who want to be part of this community effort."
For more information on STEP, visit www.yale.edu/step.
-- By Susan Gonzalez
T H I S
One step at a time, student group
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