Harvard's Top Ten Ways to Green Your Scene

Harvard University does a lot to support alternative transportation.Harvard’s Commuter Choice Program offers a 50% pre-tax subsidy for the MBTA public transit system passes. This includes MBTA buses, subways, commuter rail lines and boats.

If every Harvard affiliate drove 30 fewer miles per month, we would save approximately 550,000 gallons of gasoline per year, which would save:

$820,000 @ $1.50/gallonOver 10.5 MILLION pounds of CO2

That’s like taking 930 cars off the road!

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Modern computers are designed to handle 40,000 on-off

cycles before failure, so turning them on and off is not bad for them.

Screen savers do not save energy.Certain graphics-intensive screen savers can cause the computer to burn twice as much energy and may prevent a computer from entering sleep mode.

If every student, faculty, and staff member ran their computer 24/7 for a year without sleep mode or powering off, it would result in 16.3 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions. Turning those computers off or into a low power standby state for 1/2 of that time could save us:

$1.3 MILLION in utility bills8.2 MILLION pounds of CO2

That’s like taking 700 cars off the road!

Many appliances keep consuming energy when they are plugged in but not on.Devices like chargers, TVs, VCRs, DVD players, stereos, and coffee pots can be using energy even when you think they are completely off.

If 50% of Harvardians who own a printer (assuming 1 in 3) turned them off with a power strip when not in use, we would save approximately:

$100,000 in utility bills.6 MILLION pounds of CO2

That’s like taking 54 cars off the road!

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The mercury in CFLs does not make them dangerous.CFLs contain 4 x less mercury (a drop the size of a ball point pen tip) than what is produced in providing the additional electricity for an incandescent bulb over its lifetime.

If every Harvard student, faculty, and staff switched one 75W incandescent bulb to a 20W CFL, we would save up to:

$330,000 in utility bills2 MILLION pounds of CO2

That’s like taking 170 cars off the road!

Showers are not always more efficient than baths.This depends largely on the length of your shower; the average bath uses 20+ gallons of hot water. If you keep your shower under 10 minutes, then showers remain the most efficient option.

If all of Harvard's dorm/apartment residents shaved just 1 minute off their daily showers, we would save over 9 million gallons of water per year, which would also save:

$480,000 in utilities bills500,000 pounds of CO2

That’s like taking 930 cars off the road!

It takes less energy to cool a room and to heat it back up than to leave it at the warmer temperature. The amount of energy needed to heat a room up is almost the same as the amount saved while it’s cooling down. In fact, from the time your room stabilizes at the lower temperature until you start heating it up again, you’re saving energy.

If all occupants turned the heat down by 1 degree during the winter in all spaces in the buildings heated by Harvard's central steam plant, we would annually save:

$600,000 to $1 million in utilities bills3 to 5 MILLION pounds of CO2

That’s like taking 260 to 430 cars off the road!

It is healthy to eat vegetarian.

Studies have shown that vegetarians (who follow a well-balanced, low-fat, high-fiber diet) often have lower incidences of coronary artery disease, hypertension, obesity and some forms of cancer.

If every Harvard affiliate ate no meat for one day per week (but would otherwise have eaten an average American diet that day), we would prevent the emissions equivalent to:

14 MILLION pounds of CO2

That’s like taking 1,280 cars off the road!

Washing clothes in cold water is just as effective as washing clothes in hot water.Hot water is only beneficial when you’re trying to remove oily stains, and can wear clothes out quickly. The enhanced ability to kill allergens only occurs in 131-140F range; Harvard machines have hot water in the 110-120F range, like most residential ones.

If all of Harvard's 12,372 dorm/apartment residents washed one less load per week in hot water, using cold instead, we would annually save:

$80,000 in utility bills500,000 pounds of CO2

That’s like taking 43 cars off the road!

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It’s safer to drink tap water than bottled water. The EPA has a higher standard for tap water than the FDA has for bottled water.

If every Harvard affiliate gave up 3 PET plastic bottles per week, we would collectively avert the production of 460,000 lbs worth of plastic per year, saving approximately 26 billion Btus of energy, and annually saving:

$18,000 in disposal costs3 MILLION pounds of CO2

That’s like taking 260 cars off the road!

Recycling processes have improved to the point where most recycling most commodities saves energy and money.

It is also good for the economy, as recycling creates 10 times as many jobs as trash disposal.

If every Harvard affiliate recycled one more 0.7 ounce aluminum can per day instead of trashing it, we would keep 255 metric tons of aluminum out of our landfills every year, saving 47,000 million Btus of energy and:

$8,000 in disposal costs5.5 MILLION pounds of CO2

That’s like taking 480 cars off the road!