September marks the beginning of the University Sustainability Office’s new Change Your State campaign, a program promoting environmental awareness and sustainable action throughout the N.C. State community.
“As the world’s population grows rapidly, many of the natural resources we need to live have not, so there’s a challenge to do more with less. By being smarter about how we travel, eat, use resources and spend our time, we can create a better N.C. State and world,” said Rebekah Dunstan, an N.C. State alumna and program coordinator for the University Sustainability Office.
The campaign uses monthly themes, such as food, energy, zero waste and travel, to encourage students to make small, sustainable changes to various areas of their lives. September’s theme, food, stresses the importance of eating locally and reducing food waste.
The Sustainability Office is also incorporating a new digital aspect to the campaign, an app called JouleBug. Developed by N.C. State alumni, the app helps users keep track of sustainable actions in a way that feels as if they are playing a game with friends.
According to Grant Williard, an N.C. State alumnus and creator of JouleBug, the app lets users earn points, pins and badges for acting sustainably, which are incorporated into a score that is ranked on a leader board.
“You earn pins and badges for sustainable actions, and in October we’ll have a campus-wide JouleBug contest,” Dunstan said.
Williard started working on the app after he discovered the impact of his own carbon footprint a few years ago. He aspired to create an app that provided users with the knowledge, motivation and reminders to act more sustainably without being too time consuming.
“In addition to the Pack Pride Badge and Pins, the app has literally hundreds of sustainable suggestions…but you really make them your own when you add your own photos, captions, comments, et cetera,” Williard said.
Williard said the best part about the app is its newest feature, which allows users to customize their sustainable story with their own pictures and comments. These personalized touches give it more of a social feel, he said.
“When we see our friends acting sustainably, we start to say, ‘I can do that; maybe even better.’ Although each action by itself is pretty small, when you realize there are 30,000-plus students and thousands more faculty and staff, there is a huge opportunity to move the needle on our campus alone,” Williard said.