Green Cup Prize

Two NMH Students
Win Green Cup Prize

GILL, MA— Fifteen northeast independent schools participated in the Green Cup Challenge in February, vying to see which could cut electricity use by the largest percentage. The Millbrook School in upstate New York won bragging rights this year. Northfield Mount Hermon School seniors Sara Tower of Gill and Lillian Chan of Hong Kong won the prize for best student initiative for introducing NMH to its eco-footprint and for enacting a game of Climate Change Jeopardy.

During the contest, NMH prevented 7,929 pounds of carbon monoxide from entering the atmosphere, and cut its emissions 1 percent, garnering an 11th-place finish. NMH’s Green Cup czar Becca Leslie, who with teachers from Phillips Exeter Academy and the Lawrenceville School, ran the contest, noted that NMH reduced its electricity use by 10.7 percent last year (and won the challenge). Sustaining that decline, and reducing consumption by an additional 1 percent, shows how students, faculty, and staff pitched in to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses.

NMH students in one dormitory passionately pursued energy reduction. Cottage 4 reduced electricity use by a whopping 41 percent during the month, winning the small-dorm category in the intradorm competition at NMH. Crossley won the large-dorm prize, reducing consumption by 9.3 percent. During the challenge, NMH screened green films, such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth; dined by candlelight; and replaced incandescent bulbs in the dining hall with cold cathode ones. The school distributed 650 compact fluorescent bulbs at the beginning of the school year.

Collectively, the 15 schools in the competition, which stretched geographically from New Jersey to New Hampshire, spared 381,202 pounds of the greenhouse gas carbon monoxide from being emitted. That’s the equivalent of taking 33 cars off the road. Other local high schools participated in the challenge: Deerfield Academy dropped usage by nearly 1 percent, and came in 12th. Stonleigh-Burnham School saw a 3-percent increase, in part because it uses electricity to heat a large barn. It came in 14th.

Contact: Kate Snyder, 413-498-3357 or ksnyder@nmhschool.org.

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