About the Program

What is REP?

REP is a peer-to-peer educational program, helping students to teach other students how to reduce waste production, decrease resource consumption, and promote sustainable dorm habits. REP provides an effective avenue of communication between students and university decision-makers concerning resource use on campus.

Seventeen student representatives, at least one per upperclass dorm and three in the Freshman Yard, are employed to work four hours per week on a range of dorm-based ecological education programs and energy-efficiency measures. Three student captains are employed for 10 hours a week to guide the student Reps, and one of these captains serves as a mentor for the Yard Reps. The Yard Captain and the Yard Reps also coordinate a volunteer entryway Eco-Rep program.  The entire Resource Efficiency Program is coordinated by an employee of the Green Campus Initiative.

The Resource Efficiency Program now administers an annual Green Cup competition as a way of energizing and monitoring annual campus environmental impact reduction activities. In 2003, REP took over administering the Green Cup from the Harvard College Environmental Action Committee, which had been running the competition since 1990. Each year, the FAS Office of Physical Resources sponsors prizes, which are awarded to increasingly resource-efficient dorms.

REP continues to evolve and expand as its own successes gain ground.

A Steering Group guides the FAS Resource Efficiency Program, consisting of representatives from every funding partner, key student environmental leaders, and REP staff.

Goals

The goals of REP can be summarized as:

  • Reduce wasteful consumption of resources on campus;
  • Decrease refuse generated by increasing the proportion of waste that is reused and/or recycled, rather than trashed (supporting Harvard's goal of 45% of waste diverted to recycling in 2007);
  • Develop active student environmental leaders who strategically coordinate with operations staff to achieve environmental impact reduction on campus;
  • Create a norm of environmentally-aware behavior among Harvard College students, both on campus and in their future roles as community leaders.

To these ends, we:

  • Educate the campus on the need for environmental sustainability;
  • Increase awareness of the cumulative and aggregated effects of individuals’ choices in the dorms;
  • Contribute to making environmentally-preferable behaviors convenient and natural parts of everyday life;
  • Pass on important information to providers of student services about barriers to student conservation;
  • Take advantage of student social networks to facilitate behavioral change;
  • Facilitate the exchange of resources and belongings that retain value;
  • Critically evaluate our initiatives and their associated financial savings;
  • Reinvest a portion of the savings we generate to pay our Reps in order to maintain accountability and further reduce Harvard’s environmental impact;
  • Utilize administrative partners to maximize Reps' effectiveness;
  • Learn from our successes and failures and develop institutional memory as an aid to future environmental progress on campus;
  • Actively mentor students as they develop as leaders;
  • Foster a cohesive and supportive community that enhances students' ability and enthusiasm to work towards the above goals.

REP’s Key Campaigns

  • Recycling and waste reduction
  • Reuse – clothing exchanges, supply sharing
  • Energy conservation – lights, computers, appliances
  • Heating efficiency – storm windows, radiator control
  • Water conservation – shower length, leaks, turn off the tap
  • Laundry – cold/warm, air dry
  • Green cleaning – fewer harmful chemicals
  • Dining hall dishware retention
  • Dining choices – food awareness, eating local and organic, taking what you’ll eat, calories of energy per calorie of food
  • Travel tips – public transit, carpooling, the environmental cost of flight