The CU Environmental Center awarded $1,300 to students who pitched their ideas for sustainability innovations on campus in the first ever Buffs Sustainable Solutions Challenge.
An audience of CU students, administration, friends and family watched Monday night via Zoom as students pitched their ideas to reduce CU’s environmental footprint. While the presentations addressed a wide range of sustainability challenges, the top prizes were claimed by students addressing architecture styles and food waste in campus dining halls.
The Sustainable Solutions Challenge was originally a bi-partisan proposal brought forth by a team of CU Regents to the President’s Office. "The Buffs Sustainability Challenge was a great pilot to gauge enthusiasm of student participation and to test the mechanics of the competition. It came off splendidly with nine student pitches presented to the judging panel and viewed by EC staff, community members and Regents Ganahl and Smith. The students were passionate, poised and showed creativity in their ideas, which ranged from reducing food waste and water usage to the winning pitch of replacing the aging UMC roof with a living roof. I can't wait to see living roofs sprouting up across campus! I also learned a lot, like the concept of biophilic design. I hope students will apply for the grants offered by the EC to have their ideas come to fruition," summed up Regent Lesley Smith. Regent Heidi Ganahl added, “sustainability is something the University of Colorado excels at, so encouraging that excellence among our students is a natural. They are engaged, creative and committed around sustainability issues, so it was easy for the regents to support a contest to further that.”
Green Roofs proposal wins first place
Travis Torline ('21), Nick Provost (‘21) and Nina Hooper (‘22) collected the first place prize of $1,000. The team presented an idea for implementing green roofs across campus, beginning with the fifth floor of the University Memorial Center. They demonstrated how green roofs, outfitted with low growing, native Colorado plant species, would reduce heating and cooling costs for campus buildings, resulting in a lower carbon footprint.
While the environmental benefits were clear, the team chose to place a stronger emphasis on the social aspects of their proposal. Green roofs provide additional spaces for people to congregate with one another and interact with nature. Having these spaces on our roofs allows everyone to enjoy nature as opposed to some other types of “green” developments that lead to gentrification and exclude people from accessing nature.
The Green Roofs team provides a great example for how sustainability is important for all disciplines, not just environmental scientists. While Travis is an economics major, Nina and Nick are both studying electrical engineering. They all serve on the CU Student Government (CUSG) Sustainability Think Tank.
As the Sustainability Chair for CUSG, Travis believes that this kind of competition is exactly what CU students have been waiting for to unlock their creativity. “All of the pitches showed that students were innovative and forward thinking on sustainability. A lot more students have these ideas and want to see them take shape; this competition will only encourage more innovation and help translate these ideas into action.”
Team Planeteers wins honorable mention
Team Planeteers claimed runner-up honors, led by Cindy Lee (‘22), Frank Medina (‘23) and Lena Kim (‘22), who presented an opportunity to reduce food waste in campus dining halls with a simple behavior change. They showed that by removing trays from their cafeterias, other universities have reduced their food waste by up to a third. Less food wasted means less water and energy is consumed in our supply chain, and more food is available for those in need.
Lee, Medina and Kim are all business administration majors and met to form their team through the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility (CESR). For them, the Buffs Sustainable Solutions Challenge was an opportunity to hone their presentation skills and to solve an issue that they each cared deeply about. More importantly, they wanted to compete because they saw this challenge as a pathway to seeing their ideas come to fruition. As Kim said, “It was very empowering knowing that leaders from campus were listening to us and that they would go out and actually implement the ideas that everyone pitched.”
Lee had known that food waste was a large problem for campus ever since she began working in CU dining halls. The team’s combined skills paid off for them as they created an innovative solution to addressing food waste that couples artificial intelligence with simple behavior changes.
Moving forward, the Environmental Center is going to explore funding options and implementation pathways for each of the eight ideas that were presented. Next year, each team will have an opportunity to compete in the relaunched President’s Sustainable Solutions Challenge. This competition originally was meant to showcase sustainability innovation from all four CU campuses. However, disruptions from COVID-19 forced us to adjust our format and limited our capacity to a single campus. Our leaders are confident that we will be back on track to host the full competition next spring and optimistic about the event's potential to accelerate sustainability efforts. As CU Boulder Chief Sustainability Officer Heidi VanGenderen said, “The first sustainable solutions challenge had a terrific array of ideas covering several different resource areas. The concepts presented by the teams that made the finals all had great merit and should all be taken under consideration for further development and implementation on our campus. Continual mining of ideas coming from our students, faculty and staff is a key strategy for advancing our leadership in sustainability – and the Sustainable Solutions Challenge will be one notable venue through which that can happen.”