Students, staff and faculty can participate and log activities that reduce their carbon footprint
By JORDAN POLTORAK — campus@theaggie.org
The Cool Campus Challenge, organized by ASUCD’s Environmental Policy and Planning Commission (EPPC) started on April 8 and will take place until April 29. Students, staff and faculty can all participate in logging activities that lower their carbon footprint on the website for the challenge. The challenge was created in 2013 with the goal of carbon neutrality across the entire University of California system in 2025.
Kelly Abey, a fourth-year environmental policy analysis and planning and sustainable environmental design double major as well as EPPC chairperson, discussed the importance of this challenge.
“This shows students that it’s easy to take actions to improve your carbon footprint,” Abey said. “Things like walking or biking to school are things that we don’t even realize improve our carbon footprint.”
The website allows participants to sign up as individuals or in groups. The top ten winners will receive prizes.
“It’s like a social media platform where you can log your actions for the day,” Daphne Crother, a fourth-year political science major and vice chairperson of the EPPC, said . “Then, you get points and it shows you how much CO2 you have saved.”
The challenge was originally designed to see which of the 10 UCs was the most sustainable. However, it has evolved to an individual campus competition.
“We want to encourage students to take sustainable actions in the month of April, but also take them and apply them to life year-round,” Crother said. “All the small things you do can add up.”
The website lists the actions users can take and the amount of CO2 they would save from the action. Their Instagram page states, it is a “student-led movement to fight climate change through individual action.”
“[The challenge] allows you to see how much of a difference you can make with your individual actions,” Abey said.
Abey and Crother wanted to emphasize the importance of individual actions but also the influence of large corporations.
“As much as students can do, it’s also important to remember the impact that these large fossil fuel companies have as well,” Crother said.
To take part in the challenge, students can go to the Cool Campus website.
Written by: Jordan Poltorak — campus@theaggie.org
