Two weeks into the competition, 11,000 gallons of water and 11,238 kilowatt hours have been saved by the 16 Panhellenic Association and Interfraternity council chapters , according to the energy challenge website.
“It’s so many people (in the greek community), and we can have this amount of difference, so why not work together as a community to do it?” PHA Director of Sustainability Katie Nobbe said.
Duke Energy workers check chapter house meters periodically to determine energy usage , Office of Sustainability intern Andrew Carty said. Two weeks before the competition began , Duke Energy took a meter reading from each house to create a baseline. Conservation progress is calculated based off the percentage of actual usage compared to ?expected usage.
Currently, Theta Chi fraternity is the front-runner in the energy challenge utilizing 50 percent of its expected energy usage. Theta Chi won the spring 2014 energy challenge, according to the energy ?challenge website.
To participate in the energy challenge, each chapter contributes $50. The winning chapter receives the combined funds and a trophy made out of recycled ?materials.
Chapters can monitor their progress through the energy challenge website or on the Eco App, Carty said.
The sustainability chairs from each chapter have implemented green techniques into their houses by encouraging shorter showers, unplugging electronics not in use and regular recycling.
“It is so easy to just turn the light switch off,” Nobbe said. “It takes a second. It’s not too much to ask of the chapter members to just do their small part.”
Some chapters have taken matters into their own hands to go green. For example, Kappa Delta recently bought its own recycling bins to put indoors to encourage more frequent recycling , KD sustainability chair Faith ?Groff said.
“It’s easy,” she said. “It’s going to make it better for our kids, (and) it’s going to make it better for us. You just got to do it if you want to keep the world you’re living in clean.”
Along with the energy challenge and greek sustainability, the sustainability chairs are looking to make eco-friendly practices more of a priority in greek life, ?Nobbe said.
Both the PHA and the Interfraternity Council directors have collaborated with Carty to develop a certification process for chapters going green. This would mean chapters would be held responsible to reduce, reuse and recycle.
The process would work as a point system with eco-friendly acts weighted based on difficulty, Carty said. For example, a lower-scoring action could be changing 75 percent of the light bulbs to energy efficient bulbs. High scoring actions could be paying a carbon offset fee to reduce greenhouse gases.
The certification process is expected to be implemented by 2015.
“The greek community gets a lot of heat a lot of times,” Groff said. “But I think this is a great place for us to start setting an example and start getting IU into gear to help save the environment.”
