For the second year in a row, Dana Hall’s Sustainability Committee, also known as The Green Team, will lead the Dana community in The Green Cup Challenge. The Green Cup Challenge is a national competition against other schools to see which can reduce their energy consumption by the greatest percentage for a month.

Through February 14, students, faculty and staff will be turning down heat, turning off lights, switching to energy-saving bulbs, unplugging unused appliances and chargers and other tasks that reduce energy use in hope to become the greenest school in the Northeast Boarding category.

To monitor Dana’s progress, each week Green Team members will accompany a member of the Buildings and Grounds staff to the electricity meters in the Upper School, Middle School, the Johnstons, Wheeler and Greylodge dorms. They will note the current number and subtract the previous week’s number to get the number of kWh used during each week. These numbers will be compared to other schools in terms of percent change.

The Green Team also is using Facebook as part of this year’s Green Cup Challenge. Students, faculty and staff members are encouraged to take pictures of themselves being green, and those photos will be posted to Dana Hall’s official Facebook page. Whoever takes the picture that gets the most “likes” will receive a small prize. Dana Hall’s Facebook page can be found at www.facebook.com/DanaHallSchool.

The Green Cup Challenge is open to any public, private, charter or independent K-12 school. It was launched as an inter-school energy challenge in 2006 at Phillips Exeter Academy, Northfield Mount Hermon and the Lawrenceville School. In 2007, the Challenge included 15 boarding schools and joined with the Green Schools Alliance (GSA) to become a GSA program. The Challenge takes place each February to call attention to peak winter energy use. Milton Academy and Deerfield Academy are among the other Northeast Boarding schools that are participating in this year’s competition. In addition to competing with other schools, Dana also will hold an energy saving competition between dorms.

The overall goal of the Challenge is for schools to work collectively to achieve an aggregated electrical energy reduction of at least 7%. The winner of the challenge will be the school to reduce energy consumption by the greatest percentage.

For more information about The Green Cup Challenge please visit www.greencupchallenge.net. View and vote for Dana Hall's Green Cup Challenge video.