2019 Winners
2019 Winner, Undergraduate
Tyreek Gaynor-Fray – SmartSustain
It is estimated that 1 per cent of the water on this planet is consumable for humans on the planet. Yet, even so, North American culture is wasteful of this limited commodity. SmartSustain is an environmentally friendly ecosystem which encourages society to efficiently use resources through personal responsibility. It will reward those individuals who are prudent towards sustainability through a redeemable token economy by installing water-usage timers in the residence showers around campus. To inform residents of their usage burden, there will be color levels (green, orange and red, or good, satisfactory and bad) indicating the extent of water being used which students can check on their mobile app. If the user meets the desired range calibrated for efficient water usage, the timer will send this information to the system, and the user will be rewarded with tokens which convert into benefits on campus.
2019 Winner, Graduate
Joyla Furlano and Sabina Rakhimbekova - Student Re-use
Every year, thousands of students move into and out of temporary student housing on, or close, to campus, often leaving unwanted but usable furniture, household items, and school supplies by the street curb, While Western Sustainability offers the opportunity for students to drop off unwanted, non-perishable items on or off campus on April 28-30 of each year, Student Re-use will expand on this by running a full seven days in both the first week of September and the last week of April. The program would involve finding an accessible, small space on campus that could be rented out for the week-long period. Western students would be invited to drop-off and collect unwanted, re-usable items to the rented space on campus throughout the week, and all leftover items would be donated to local London charities to help residents and families in need.
Images by Paul Mayne, Western News.
