The Phillips Academy organizers have begun preparations for the upcoming 2008 Green Cup Challenge. The Green Cup Challenge, which will include 31 schools this year, will take place from January 28 to February 25. Sustainability Coordinator Becky Bogdanovitch, the E-Stewards and the student members of Eco-Action and ERAC comprise the group of people responsible for organizing the Green Cup Challenge at Phillips Academy. So far representatives from Phillips Academy have attended a planning conference in November at NMH where they met with representatives from other schools. Attendees learned most of the necessary logistical information of the Green Cup Challenge. The students and the faculty advisors have participated in many workshops as well. In addition, outside organizers of the Green Cup Challenge have come to Phillips Academy to sell T-shirts, which they had designed before winter break. The sale began before break in Commons and continued until last Friday in the Underwood Room after break. Although the complete Green Cup Challenge calendar has yet to be finalized, Gary Hirschburg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm, has been scheduled to speak at the January 16 All-School Meeting. His talk will address how his company deals with being environmentally responsible. Also at the January 16 All-School Meeting, the Phillips Academy organizers of the Green Cup Challenge will present a video that will be entered in the video contest, according to Alison Kent ’08, a board member of Eco-Action. Like last year, the video contest will be decided by a vote, but the videos will be posted on YouTube instead of Exeter’s website. The official organizers of the Green Cup Challenge have not announced exactly when the initial energy consumption reading will take place. Last year, a computer in Gelb, which organized the information by building, tracked Phillips Academy’s energy consumption. “The gym and Uncommons are expected to be big contributors to total energy used,” Kent said. Not all buildings are monitored during the challenge, because some of the older buildings do not have meters, according to Kent. Phillips Exeter Academy founded the Green Cup Challenge in 2003 in order to “educate the community about the environmental and economic impact of one’s actions, specially in relation to global climage changes, and to reduce campus emissions of greenhouse gases,” according to the GCC website.
