Florida State University
ER-2: Student Sustainability Outreach Campaign

The Phantom Slayer energy conservation competition aims to raise awareness about phantom loads – the electric power consumed by appliances when they are switched “off” or “stand-by.” Each fall semester, from October 1st through October 31st, ALL residence halls compete to lower their energy consumption (determined by square foot of the building). The building with the lowest energy consumption wins. Eco-Reps and residence hall staff are encouraged to engage their peers through energy conservation programming and informational bulletin boards. RecycleMania is a friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities. Over a 10-week period, schools report recycling and trash data which are then ranked according to who collects the largest amount of recyclables per capita, the largest amount of total recyclables, the least amount of trash per capita, or have the highest recycling rate. With each week’s reports and rankings, participating schools watch how their results fluctuate against other schools and use this to rally their campus communities to reduce and recycle more. FSU competes in the Gorilla category and gathers material campus wide (residence halls, dining facilities, classroom buildings, etc). Again, outreach is developed through Eco-Reps activities and Facebook.

Phantom Slayer 2010 results showed that residence halls reduced consumption by 1.6% when compared to the previous year. All residence halls that demonstrated a decreased usage also beat the campus residential hall kwh reduction percentage. Recycle Mania 2011 results show that we recycled 218,113 lbs of paper, cardboard, glass, plastic, and aluminum during our 10-week collection period. We finished the competition ranked 89th out of 362 schools competing in the Gorilla category.