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 Bruce Pitman presents a plaque to the men of Delta Sigma Phi fraternity on Tuesday with Greek Advisor Adrien Loehring and Environmental Science major Ben Marshall for winning the Greek Energy Challenge by reducing their energy consumption by the largest amount among the participants over a four-month period. Clifford Murphy/Argonaut
Six fraternities and five sororities competed for $500 by attempting to reduce electricity consumption the most. DSP decreased its consumption by 24.7 percent, which saved the fraternity $995.
Theta Chi came in second place, decreasing its output by 20.1 percent and saving the house $789.
The competition was a senior project by environmental student Benjamin Marshall. It began in December and ended in March.
DSP was given $500, donated by the Environmental Science Department and a “Kill-A-Watt” award Tuesday night at the DSP house. Vice Provost of Student Affairs Bruce Pitman and Greek adviser Adrien Loehring spoke at the award presentation.
“Its focus was (based) solely on changing human behavior,” Marshall said.
He said out of four months, January was the only one where houses increased the amount of electricity used. Marshall said he thinks it was because people had just returned from Christmas break and forgot about the competition.
To encourage houses participating in the competition, Marshall sent out monthly updates to each house letting them know where they ranked.
To make things fair for the houses with more members, each house competed against themselves. The amount of electricity used was compared to the three previous years.
“It gave us some good habits,” said DSP President Clayton Miller, including turning off lights when leaving a room, unplugging cell phone chargers when not in use and taking shorter showers. Miller said the loss of one of the fraternity’s dryer also helped.
“Houses didn’t go to any extremes, just being more energy conscious and cutting out waste,” Marshall said.
Marshall said he thinks most Greek houses will continue with the habits they have established because they are in a routine now.
“The amount they were saving was an eye opener,” he said.
Out of 11 houses, only two used more electricity. Kappa Alpha Theta increased its consumption by 22.5 percent and Kappa Sigma increased by 4 percent.
Marshall said when he asked KAT about the increase they said they couldn’t figure out what was going on and that they felt terrible.
“It’s expensive to live,” said Christine Dixon, environmental science adviser. “We have got to be conservative, you can’t afford to live the way we have been.”
Dixon said she likes to see projects where people change their behavior for the better.
The Environmental Science Department hopes someone next year will continue on with the project and take it to the residence halls, Dixon said.
Marshall said if someone takes this project to the residence halls, it has the potential to save the university $16,000 annually on utility bills.
“(We) hope to keep doing it because it was so successful,” she said.
She said Avista Utilities was so impressed that it is taking it to the next level. Sustainability Coordinator, Darin Saul said it wants to implement energy saving projects into 17 Greek houses. They plan to do this by insulating the houses and using different light bulbs.
Between 11 different Greek houses $4,020 was saved and an average 12.2 percent of electricity use
was decreased.
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