Universities across the nation are combating wastefulness and focusing on sustainability, but only one will be able to take home the title of America's Greenest Campus.
The America's Greenest Campus contest is the first national competition among colleges to reduce their communities' carbon footprints.
The winners will be identified by Oct. 5 by calculating the number of participants from each school and the largest percentage of carbon emissions reduced. They will have a chance to earn up to $20,000 in prize money.
Climate Culture, the organization behind the contest, is a group of recent graduates from Yale, Harvard and New York universities dedicated to sustainability efforts. Its Web site provides a carbon-footprint calculator and reduction service while promoting a sense of community with others also passionate about environmentalist efforts.
Participants sign up using their school e-mail addresses and are encouraged to take personal actions or organize events and campaigns to reduce their carbon footprints.
On the contest leaderboard, George Mason University, with 894 members and a 2.66 percent reduction, is ranked number one. At number seven, Harvard is the first Ivy League institution to appear on the list with 78 members and a 0.70 percent reduction. It is closely followed by Yale at 10th place and Brown University at 16th.
Penn sits at number 203, with one member and 0.61 percent carbon dioxide reduced.
Yet a number of people involved with Penn's sustainability efforts in the past few years say this ranking seems to contradict Penn's reputation as a "green" campus.
"[The contest] doesn't seem like a good measure," Jennifer Rizzi, spokeswoman for Facilities and Real Estate Services, said. She attributed the low ranking to a lack of awareness about the contest.
FRES Sustainability coordinator Dan Garofalo named four organizations that have assessed Penn's sustainability efforts - in particular, the Sustainability Endowments Institute's letter-grade system that gave Penn an A- last year.
The current project of Green Campus Partnership, the umbrella organization for all campus initiatives to help the environment, is the Climate Action Plan, an outline of sustainability recommendations in response to Penn President Amy Gutmann signing the Presidents Climate Commitment in 2007. It began in spring 2007 and is slated to be finished next fall.
The Penn Environmental Group is also "a huge group on campus," co-director and College sophomore Jenna Stahl said. "Amy Gutmann has made [sustainability] a priority and pushed along the interest, both student-wide and in general."
Stahl named education, student outreach and Recyclemania as some of PEG's projects.
Though Stahl was also unaware of the contest, she encourages involvement, because sustainability "is not just about everyone, it's about you, too," she said.
Garofalo downplayed the idea of competitions, referencing conclusions made at a recent intercollegiate meeting.
"We're all making an effort to change the world," he said.
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