Conservation
Join the campus community in making VIMS an example of how to be green.
Check out our tips on energy and water conservation (coming soon) below.
Buildings
One of the first steps in becoming greener is to quantify what is driving the most energy intensive processes. As a start to this, the Green Team has collected information on electricity usage for all the buildings on VIMS campus. This has already started a discussion on ways to make efficiency improvements on campus. Additionally, we have gathered similar information on propane gas and water usage.
Personal Decisions
Things you can do right now to make an impact here at VIMS.
- Lights: Turn them off. Look for other places on campus that have lights on unnecessarily and take matters into your own hands.
- Water bottles: Don't use those plastic throw-away kind. Bring in a mug, or bottle of your own, and fill it up at a bubbler. Plastic is terrible for everyone involved.
- Hoods: Close them. Energy (including the extra energy needed to re-heat/-cool all the air that gets sucked in) hogging.
- Bike: Use the GreenTeam bike (kept in the shed next to Raleigh House) instead of your car to get to local spots (e.g. the boat basin, Subway, etc.).
- Standby power: Especially monitors. Use a power strip. Set your computer's energy settings to power saving mode.
- Screen savers: just stop it. Screens no longer have a problem with "burn in".
- Refrigerators: You don't really need this. They are ludicrously inefficient and the common ones have plenty of space. If you don't want to use a common refrigerator because it's too messy, clean it (or insist that everyone else clean it too). Same goes for microwaves, toasters, etc.
- Space heaters: Wear a sweater instead.
- Printing: use both sides. Re-use as scrap, then recycle it.
- Air travel: whenever possible, use a video conference. Taking one plane trip pretty much outweighs all other carbon-cutting steps you could take.