On February 25th, Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) announced the selection of projects for the inaugural lifecycle assessment plus universities (LCA+U) challenge, a joint project between ESW and Sustainable Minds. The LCA+U challenge encourages student members of ESW to work with campus staff and sustainability lifecycle assessment software to identify solutions or improvements to campus operations that have quantifiably lower environmental impacts.

The six participating universities are Georgia Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of British Columbia and the University of Pittsburgh. “These projects give our students a chance to explore alternatives that will really make an impact on their universities. We are tackling problems ranging from take-out food containers to building energy use and transport of organic material to compost locations, and are excited to use our partnership with Sustainable Minds to show campus leaders how they can truly have a positive impact through their decisions,” said Rob Best, Projects Director for ESW.

The seven teams selected for the LCA+U Challenge will receive access to Sustainable Minds’ web-based software for rapidly assessing the environmental impacts of alternative designs. The results of the first LCA+U Challenge will be presented at a public webinar on May 8th, 2013. The final reports will be publicly available shortly thereafter to help other institutions make environmentally-sound choices in similar situations.

Read the full press release >
Read about the projects >
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