Increase Your Green Measurement

Grand Prize

  • $1500 grant
  • School banner
  • Eco-giftbags

3 Second Prizes

  • $500 grants

it also helps the world out too...

Now how do I measure all of this stuff?!

We don’t require you to give us exact numbers of the changes that you made. You’re too busy greening your schools to drive yourself crazy over numbers. You’re going to be judged on the quality of your work and the overall impact you make. It’s important to be sure that real changes are being made. Here are some tips on how to estimate your progress:

Hours of Energy

  • Watts per hour can get really complicated. You’d probably spend more energy trying to calculate it than you saved, so estimate your hours in a way that makes sense.
  • Get Our Widget! You can calculate and track the carbon footprint of your school with our one-of-a-kind widget. Post it on your school's homepage or your myspace to show that you're Increasing Your Green.
  • Separate the energy saved by appliances. That way we can compare your results directly with other schools (plus- let’s be real here- an electric pencil sharper shut off for an hour is different than shutting off the copy machine for an hour- get it?)
  • Use hours/appliance to measure. Say you shut off ten computers that you didn’t shut off before overnight (about 8 hours): 10 x 8 = 80 hours of computer energy saved.

Recycled Waste:

  • Keep general tabs on how much recycling you do. Did you put a new recycle bin in every classroom? In the cafeteria? How about the copy room or teacher lounges? How much recycling did you take out daily/weekly/in the whole month?
  • If you can keep track of the exact pound-age of recycling, great! If not, keep these facts in mind: 1 pound= 34 aluminum cans or 2 glass bottles or 18 plastic bottles. Steel cans will vary by size.
  • You can measure much waste you’ve reduced in the school as a whole by seeing how much trash is taken away from the school at the beginning of the contest and how much is taken away at the end of the month. Try a daily or weekly average. If you can’t get the numbers by weighing, you can also try counting the number of bags. Sounds funny, but it’s a really accurate method.

People Involved/Impacted:

  • Did you involve the club? Your whole school?
  • Who made the actual changes? Did teachers and staff help out?
  • How did you get people outside of your club involved?