Campaigns and Contests
FAS-CERP's approach to raising awareness involves educational and entertaining activities. Competitions, contests and challenges have been used to engage students and staff in energy conservation efforts. Two of these have become recurring events because of their success and popularity in the FAS community.
Go Cold Turkey & Take the Pledge
The pledge competition has been run during the Fall semester for
three years in a row, with greater participation
in each successive year. Each event has focused on a
slightly different population and offered a different challenge. While the rules change slightly
from year to year, the basic premise of the competition is to have
FAS community members take an online pledge to minimize their energy
consumption during the Thanksgiving holiday and beyond. In the most
recent campaign over 4000 people signed the pledge and over 20 buildings won renewable energy certificates
equivalent to 10% of their annual energy consumption.
CERtoon
The Campus Energy Reduction Cartoon Competition and Exhibition
(a.k.a. CERtoon), now in its third season, taps into the creative power of Harvard students to educate
the FAS community about energy use and its environmental impacts. In 2006, the competition drew 130+ entries, resulting in 15 prize-winning
cartoons. The CERtoons have been exhibited in academic or administrative
buildings and in undergraduate residence halls. The contest takes place in the Spring semester with exhibitions running
throughout the following year. While the final numbers are not yet
in, it seems that departments that have hosted a CERtoon exhibition
show greater Take the Pledge participation and are more involved in energy & other resources conservation projects.