We have enrolled to participate in America's Greenest Campus, the first nationwide contest among colleges to reduce the carbon footprints of their students, faculty, alumni, and staff. Using advanced carbon tracking and reduction software from Climate Culture, America's Greenest Campus tracks the participation and carbon reductions from campuses across the country.
- Do you want to do your part to become more sustainable, to lighten your "ecological footprint," and to reduce your carbon impact?
- Are you into social networking sites?
- Do you like online gaming?
- Are you fan of virtual worlds like Second Life?
If you're into any of these activities, have we got a website for you:
Climate Culture
Climate Culture has built a social network and virtual carbon calculator to help individuals reduce their energy use and impact on climate change. Climate Culture's technology is the first to calculate a user's carbon footprint and provide accurate, personalized advice to help reduce energy consumption and cost. Based on a point system, Climate Culture's online community allows users to interact and manage their "green" status and progress based on pledges toward a greener lifestyle.
Once in Climate Culture, you create your personal profile and a customized avatar, and then enter data to help you assess your current climate impact. The carbon emissions reduction section of Climate Culture is absolutely loaded with great ideas for carbon reductions for you to consider related to your home, your workplace, your travel habits, and your consumer choices.
Every time you commit to adopting a given reduction strategy, you earn more points. From there, you can play online games, shop in the virtual store to further customize your avatar (using points you accumulate as you commit to reducing your impact), and travel around in the virtual Climate Change world.
You have to check out Climate Culture! It's a fun, interactive learning activity that helps you make a real difference to our climate impact as you play along.
To sign up, go to Climate Culture. Sign in and create a user profile using your Ithaca e-mail address (e.g. jsmith1@ithaca.edu). The ithaca.edu extension will enroll you automatically in the Ithaca College subculture community.
Warning: if you use a different e-mail address -- like @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, @aol.com or others -- you will get set up in a different Ithaca subculture group. While you can benefit from your participation, your climate reduction efforts won't count toward our campus's collective "Greenest Campus" campaign.
When you enroll as part of the Ithaca College community in Climate Culture between now and October 2009, you also help make the College eligible to win cash prizes. At the end of the contest, America's Greenest Campus will award $20,000 in total cash prizes. Campus sponsors will receive the prizes and determine how the money will be used towards sustainability measures on campus.
* $5,000 prize to the school with the most participants
* $5,000 prize to the school with the most carbon reductions per
participant
So sign up today and start making a positive difference!
America's Greenest Campus partners include Climate Culture, SmartPower, Sierra Student Coalition, National Association of Environmental Law Societies, and the U.S. Department of Energy.
