PDF
The Bentley Eco Reps, crucial members of the Residence Hall Association, are currently working to make Bentley a greener campus. This year, RHA expanded the role to allow up to three Eco Reps on each hall council, and together, they have made an outstanding impact on the Bentley community and beyond.
Last semester, the Eco Reps initiated a project that involved performing a sustainability audit of a small company, seeking to help the facility become more environmentally friendly. Spearheaded by Alicia Risigo, former president Maddie Bulkley, and current president Justine Andrews, the team worked with Jumpstart Therapy, a fitness center and occupational therapy clinic for children and families in Oakville, Connecticut.
According to Risigo, “It was awesome working with a company that had a mission statement towards nutrition and health, as being sustainable goes hand in hand with that.”
President Justine Andrews said, “The Eco Reps were looking for a way to have a greater impact and show how being green relates to businesses; the solution to that was conducting a company audit. The Eco Reps first created a list of criteria to cover in the audit which included categories such as electricity use, paper use, and general ‘green education’ for the company to pass on to its customers through actions and business practices.”
The next step of the audit involved the owner of the company, Catherine Risigo, coming to Bentley campus to give an informative presentation on the operations of Jumpstart Therapy. The Eco Reps took notes and asked thorough questions about the details of their practices in order to better understand areas for green improvement. After the presentation, the Eco Reps met and prepared a summary report including such things as the benefits and cost savings of switching to LED lights and reducing paper use.
Catherine Risigo wanted to make her business more sustainable in order to show her young clients the importance of taking care of the environment. Alicia said, “We were able to give Catherine Risigo some great tips on how to save money on paper and energy, as well as promote sustainability and living green to the impressionable children!”
One of the suggestions the Eco Reps made was that instead of advertising events with flyers, she reach out to people via mailing lists. They also informed her on how much energy her appliances were using. For example, one of the big appliances she had, but didn’t use much, was a refrigerator, which is the number one energy consuming appliance.
“With all the ideas we shared with Catherine Risigo, we also gave her management techniques to make sure her staff was on the same page as her as they were going green,” Alicia said. “It was a great successful project!”
Alicia submitted the final plan to the company over winter break, and they will be following up with them in the spring semester to see how they have used the report.
When asked about the project, Amanda King, manager of Sustainability and head of the Eco Reps, said, “It was a great opportunity to see our Eco Reps apply their sustainability and analytical skills to assist a local company in identifying opportunities to become more sustainable, efficient and save money as well.”
