UFV campuses are colder than usual this week. November 14 to 18 is Sweater Week at the university. The event was planned in hopes to raise awareness and lower costs of heating and gas consumption for the four days of Sweater Week.
The temperature in the school has be decreased from 21 to 20 C for the week. Sweater Week is designed to let students know the new temperature might affect them, as well as to provide ways students at UFV can think about how to save energy and money by dropping the temperature one degree.
Travis Gingerich, a student at UFV and sustainability coordinator assistant for the Centre for Sustainability said that dropping the temperature even slightly can “reduce the consumption and cost of heating significantly.”
“I would say that an awareness campaign is more valuable than heating the campus for the allotted amount of the time during this event,” said Gingerich.
The Centre for Sustainability came up with the event as a reminder for students that heating the 21 buildings across UFV is costly and also uses up a great deal of natural gas, a nonrenewable substance.
“Dropping the temperature by one degree saves 0.5 to 1 per cent, of the total cost of heating the school. When looking at the amount of money it costs, it is quite substantial,” said Gingerich.
The Centre for Sustainability is also hosting multiple events across campus such as a sweater selfie contest, where students can tweet a selfie of their sweater to @SustainableUFV. There will be five different “sustainable selfie situations” set up for the selfie contests, with backgrounds of nature and outdoors. There will also be daily draws for $20 gift cards for food establishments around campus as well as a UFV department hoodie of the student’s choice and a $50 gift card to the campus bookstore.
Next semester, January 2017 there will also be an event centered more towards the Chilliwack campus.
The Centre for Sustainability and Gingerich hope that “these events will help students have fun, and also think about how much natural gas is being used, as well as reducing greenhouse gas.”
