Make Orange Green
You Can Help
While students already contribute to UT’s environmental efforts through the Environmental Facilities Fee, alumni, faculty, staff, and friends can lend financial support as well through UT’s Environmental Stewardship Fund.
Established in 2003, the fund mirrors the purposes of the student fee by providing resources to conserve energy, encourage recycling efforts, and promote environmental awareness on campus. When you contribute to the fund, you help pay for upgrades to lighting and vehicles and help add to UT’s green power purchase—you help Make Orange Green.
For more on how to contribute to the fund, visit the Make Orange Green web site.
As environmental issues become more important to all of our lives, UT students, faculty, and staff are responding by making the campus more environmentally friendly.
The Make Orange Green initiative brings together efforts to reduce the university’s environmental impact and at the same time educate the university community about ways to protect the environment both on and off campus.
Perhaps the best example of this cooperation is UT’s Student Environmental Facilities Fee. In 2003, a group of students involved with Students Promoting Environmental Awareness in Knoxville (SPEAK) spearheaded a movement to encourage the university to purchase green power from TVA. Green power is electricity generated by solar, wind, and methane gas. Working with SPEAK, the university instituted a new $5 per semester student fee specifically dedicated to making environmental improvements on campus.
Money from the fee is a central part of UT’s effort to Make Orange Green. By using part of the fee to purchase green power, the university earned national recognition from the Environmental Protection Agency as a Green Power Partner. By purchasing more than 2 million kilowatt-hours, the university is the largest green power user in Tennessee and the fourth largest in the Southeast.
UT also has significantly reduced the amount of energy used on campus. Each semester as part of the Make Orange Green program, students living in the residence halls get free high-efficiency compact fluorescent light bulbs in exchange for conventional bulbs. The fluorescent bulbs save thousands of dollars in energy costs and prevent thousands of pounds of pollution from entering the air by reducing the amount of electricity produced at coal-burning power plants. Conventional lights in offices and classrooms also are replaced by more energy-efficient models. Restrooms on campus have been updated to use less water.
On a trip to campus you also might see employees of UT’s Facilities Services Department driving hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles. By using the latest technology, including biodiesel, UT is able to save on fuel costs while reducing pollution. At the same time, researchers in departments around the university are working on improving technologies from solar to hydrogen to biofuels to change the way people use energy.
Make Orange Green is also about helping focus the campus culture on the environment. Students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to change their energy behavior, from turning off lights and computer monitors to making full use of UT’s extensive recycling program. Even visitors to campus have the chance to do their part by taking advantage of UT’s Good Sports Always Recycle program at athletic events. Last year, fans recycled nearly 10 tons of trash.
This fall, students and faculty will be welcomed back to campus with a barrage of Make Orange Green information and events designed to keep them informed about UT’s environmental successes and how they can continue to help.