Lockdown Drawdown saves big & Campus Race to Zero Waste continues
We are half-way through 
Ecolympics 2021 and you still have time to win with sustainable action through March 27th! Post your sustainable actions and tag @UofLSustainable or submit them through our online form to be entered into the competition! New winners will be picked each week!
This week we are honoring the students in all 7 residence halls for saving a total of 2,212 kilowatt-hours of electricity (1.71% reduction), despite a polar vortex, during our three-week Lockdown Drawdown! from February 5-25. That's equivalent to preventing the climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions from:
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3,881 miles of driving an average car; - Burning 176 gallons of gasoline;
- Burning 1,723 pounds of coal;
- Charging 199,457 smartphones; or
- The amount of carbon sequestered by 2 acres worth of U.S. forests in a year!
Our congratulations go out to Bettie Johnson Hall, which won 1st place by reducing their electricity consumption 34%!!! Louisville Hall finished 2nd with a 5.6% reduction; and Miller Hall claimed bronze with a 2.9% savings.
Meanwhile, the Campus Race To Zero Waste! continues through March 27th. Right now we are celebrating week 4 winner, Rebecca Eaton, a UofL student who inspires us by carrying reusable utensils to skip disposables, ditching the tea bag for loose leaf, and upcycling plastic bags into a hat and yogurt cups into glasses!! See Rebecca’s actions and the Sustainable Home prize pack she won @UofLSustainable. What will you do?
T
he Campus Race To Zero Waste is a friendly annual competition among North American universities. During this 8 week period, UofL is competing to reduce waste, increase recycling & composting, and raise conservation awareness across all three campuses! Keep up with the Cards progress at the Campus Race website. Currently, in the landfill diversion category, UofL is in 16th place nationally (out of 76 schools) with a total recycling & composting rate of 45.614%.
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REDUCE & RECYCLE! Help the Cards to victory by avoiding disposables (bring your own mug, bottle, plate, etc.) and fully utilizing UofL’s amazingly easy, single-stream recycling system that lets you recycle everything in the same bin, everywhere on campus: all types of plastic, paper, cardboard, metal, and glass! Details on what you can recycle
at UofL here.
- COMPOST! We will be collecting food wastes for composting from The Ville Grill, SAC Marketplace, and other campus dining locations and adding those numbers to UofL's organics recycling totals! You can also compost your food scraps and soiled paper products in the compost bins at the Garden Commons (SW corner of Strickler Hall) and the Urban & Public Affairs Horticulture Zone. Please no animal/dairy products, but otherwise, if it came from a plant, we want to compost it: fruit & vegetable wastes/peels/rinds/seeds, bread, pasta, rice, tea bags, coffee grounds/filters, and all kinds of soiled paper products (tissues, towels, napkins, plates, cups, etc.).
Prizes:
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Weekly prizes: At the end of each of the eight weeks of Ecolympics 2021, one person who has shared their sustainable action(s) will receive a curated gift basket on the following themes:
- Green Thumb
- Outdoors
- Transportation
- Cooking Local
- Sustainable Home
- Relaxation
- Fair Trade Coffee
- Social Justice - Grand Prize: One impressive Cardinal who takes the most sustainable actions during Ecolympics 2021 will win a Cardinal-colored Danon Folding Bicycle (or another bike of your preference)!
- Post your sustainable actions and tag @UofLSustainable or submit them through our online form throughout February & March to be entered into the competition! New winners will be picked each week! Enter as often as you can!
