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Polar Bear Helps Students Save Energy

Hanover, New Hampshire - April 28, 2008

There is a new pet in a couple of the dorms at Dartmouth College. It lives in screens mounted on the hallways walls. It's an animated polar bear and it monitors energy use of the students. Day-to-day activities like turning on the lights, opening a refrigerator door, or cooking something in the microwave.

"I didn't expect that turning off one light bulb would actually do as much, but it actually seems, you know you watch the graph, and people start turning stuff off and it really affects it," says student Tim Tregubov.

But if the consumption gets too high-- like hours upon hours of video games for example-- the polar bear is directly affected. The ice it stands on starts to crack and eventually the arctic creature falls through.

"You walk by and you see the polar bear and it just makes you think 'oh yeah, I left something on in the room,'" says Tregubov.

Professor Lorie Loeb explains, "This project is a completely student-run project. So students did all of the programming, and the animation, everything from top to bottom."

The initiative is sponsored by "Green Lite Dartmouth." A Digital Arts Project that graphs real-time energy consumption campus-wide.

"We are also working with the sociology department to see how it is working. To see what has to happen to change social norms so it becomes a culture of the school to use less electricity," says Loeb.

Students say that the polar bear brings the project and issues like global warming to life.

"It just makes it a lot more personal when you see how your actions are affecting an animation or something you can relate to like a polar bear," says student Mandy Lobel.

"When it is right there in front of your face, and you are impacting it, it can make it a lot more tangible," agrees another student, Neel Joshi.

It's hoped the bear will inspire students to reduce their own carbon footprint.

"If everybody turns off their light when they go to bed, if everyone makes their laptop sleep, if everyone uses a power strip and turns it off when they are not using it, we can make a big difference," says Joshi.

A big difference not only in terms of the environment, but also in terms of the life of this animated bear.

Adam Sullivan - WCAX News