Bleed Green, Live Green, Eat Greens: An In-Depth Look at the Green Cup Challenge

Last year, Deerfield Academy reduced our electricity usage by 9.1% from our baseline, preventing the emission of 64,605 pounds of carbon dioxide (from burning coal) into the atmosphere.

DA joined the GCC in its second year, in 2007, when it was a relatively small program of 15 Northeast boarding schools competing. The program has grown immensely since then to incorporate over 120 schools. Last year’s competition in total led to the reduction of over one million kilowatt hours of electricity across all schools, enough to prevent 1.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. Deerfield finished 8th place last year in the Northeast Boarding School division (41 schools). Because the Green Cup Challenge looks at the reduction compared to a baseline of your electrical usage from previous years, it becomes increasingly difficult to be near the top of the standings year after year. Each year when you get better, it is that much harder to improve further in future years. Now that we are Green Cup “veterans,” we’ll have to work much harder to fight our way up to the top of the charts this year.

This year we will have 3 related competitions for the Green Cup. The first will be a Deerfield intramural competition between dorms. Each week one boys’ and one girls’ dorm will win a dress-down day and the overall winner will receive a free order-out meal for the dorm. The second competition is a head-to-head competition with Phillip’s Andover. For both of these we can track our relative performance real-time on the Campus Energy Dashboard. The final competition is the larger Green Cup Challenge against many schools around the northeast region.

Tips:

1. Turn your room, hallway, and common room lights off when you are not in the room.

2. Study in the common room or, if you’re an upperclassmen, in the library or a classroom.

3. Turn off your printer unless you’re using it, and print on both sides.

4. Shower in the dark and for two minutes less than you usually do.

5. Turn off your power strip when you are not using it.

6. Make sure you are washing your clothes in cold water. Gets your clothes just as clean but without the energy waste of heating water!