Wednesday, February 15 marked the end of the 2012 Green Cup Energy Challenge, a four-week interschool competition to save energy and reduce waste. The Challenge started on Wednesday, January 18 with a kick-off celebration in The Hill’s Student Center and ended with a local winter meal, which was sourced from less than 150 miles from campus.

During The Hill School's participation in the Challenge, we beat our energy savings goal by more than 9,000 kilowatt hours, which is enough electricity to power 1.3 single family homes for an entire year. Our efforts also prevented about 10.4 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, which is close to the emissions generated by two average cars driving 12,000 miles a year. In economic terms, compared to last year, we saved more than $1,000 in electricity costs.

Students enjoy ice cream at our local winter meal

“The Green Cup Challenge is an important part of our campaign to make our campus more aware of growing environmental problems that may impact our generation and generations to come,” remarked Paul Shiller ’14.

Throughout the Challenge students and faculty were encouraged to save electricity by putting their computers to sleep, turning off lights when not needed, and switching out incandescent light bulbs for compact florescent (CFL) bulbs. Additionally, the 16 chandeliers in the dining hall were retrofitted, the shutting down the language lab computers were shut down during the long winter weekend, and the School purchased 15 Energy Star copiers. All of these changes helped to reduce our overall energy usage.

The Green Cup Challenge also had a video competition. A crew of eight Hill students and more than 40 students, faculty, and faculty children actors created a three-minute video about saving energy and reducing waste. From the Westminster School in Connecticut to the Castilleja School in California, 29 schools submitted videos to the Challenge and 2,755 people voted for the films. Hill’s Green Cup Challenge film was viewed more 650 times on YouTube and received a total of 534 votes. As a result, The Hill School won second place in the popular vote category of the Green Cup Challenge Video contest!

Shiller believes the video aspect of the challenge is especially relevant, as “the film is a way to encourage our students to be greener through the usage of media and global networking."

Kathleen Smith '12 and Cassidy Jemo '12 are proud of our results and believe that “we came together more as a community this year, as the voting demonstrates.”

 

Students and faculty celebrated the success of our video on Saturday, February 18, 2012 by wearing jeans and green to Saturday classes.