Metadata

Secondary Title(s): 

Carbon Footprint Education For Colleges and Universities

School: 

St. Lawrence University

Language: 

English

Language: 

English

Record Type: 

Student paper

Identifier:

oai:dspace.lasrworks.org:10349/932

Creator: 

Douglass, James

Contributor: 

Harcourt, Ed

Contributor: 

Gava, Louise

Contributor: 

St. Lawrence University. Department of Math, Computer Science and Statistics

Given the increased interest of educational institutions to raise awareness of environmental issues, there is a desire to inform students of their personal usage of resources. Generally, this is in the form of the quantity of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are produced by the lifestyle that they lead. The volume of carbon produced either directly or indirectly by an individual’s lifestyle is dependant on a wide range of factors and is almost impossible to precisely calculate. Because it affects so many characteristics of one’s lifestyle, how an individual leads his or her life is one of the most important (if not the single most important) parts of information that lead to the accurate calculation of a carbon footprint. But if you take a look at the majority of carbon calculators currently available, the questionnaire generally presumes that the user is a homeowner or is able to monitor his or her energy consumption as one may be able to in an apartment complex. Of course this is relevant to the vast majority, but considering that so much of the “green” movement takes place on the residential campuses of colleges and universities, it seems a little odd that there is not yet a free utility available to these institutions that enables their students to easily access relevant carbon footprint information. This project seeks to meet this need. In short, the CarbonU project has the following goals: 1. Provide Sustainability Coordinators with a straightforward and intuitive interface through which they can make institutional carbon information available to interested students, faculty and staff. 2. Based on the user’s responses in the questionnaire, provide feedback with how the user may improve his or her footprint.