Ithaca College is joining schools like Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Georgia Tech in the America’s Greenest Campus contest, an effort to make campuses across the country more sustainable.

The contest uses a platform similar to a social networking site, said Marian Brown, special assistant to the provost. The contest tracks how many participants and members use the Climate Culture site in order to determine what place the college is in.

The contest is based on the number of members who use the site, so the school with the most members takes the lead. Additionally, Climate Culture monitors how much participants reduce their energy use. Progress is monitored by the Web site through a points system, and schools can win based on how many participants they have, as well as the amount of carbon reductions per participant.

The contest puts the college head-to-head with other campuses until it ends in October.

To date, the college has only sent out an Intercom announcement, but groups like the Residence Hall Association and the Resource and Environment Management Program plan to promote it for the rest of the semester.

The Climate Culture site is also an educational tool, with tips and information about what raises carbon impact and increases wasteful energy. On Climate Culture, a student’s avatar guides a participant through different ways to reduce one’s carbon footprint specific to a student’s lifestyle.

Users enter data to assess their current climate impacts and earn points by adopting different reduction strategies and committing to different life choices.

Brown said the contest advocates reducing carbon impact by using simple actions around campus and in everyday life. These things can include making sure all lights are off when possible, taking shorter or fewer showers, giving up disposable coffee cups and using double-sided printing

Brown said if the college can reduce its carbon impact, it would save money, which can then translate into the money being spent in other places, such as academic programming.

“So many things we have are fixed costs,” she said. “If we can reduce those fixed costs, then it opens up those dollars for other, and in some respects better, purposes.”

Sophomore Kristyne Fetsic said she supports efforts to be more sustainable in hopes that the money saved can then be allocated elsewhere.

 “I wish our money could go towards better things,” she said. “I am all for sustainability and in my opinion, our money could be used for other things [than utility costs].”

Mark Darling, a faculty supervisor of REMP, said becoming more sustainable and reducing carbon impact will help the economy.

“Everything that is good for the environment is going to be good economically in the long run,” he said.

Darling said jobs may be created to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions. He said technological jobs, such as designing products like solar panels and redesigning products like vehicles to be sustainable, could also be created.

Brown said the college has demonstrated it is possible to be more sustainable through “Hall Wars,” a competition between several residence halls organized by RHA last year.

The college is also taking steps beyond America’s Greenest Campus by influencing offices on campus to take on a more sustainable role through the competition and creating other programs, as the Office of Residential Life has done. Brown said she hopes RHA will become more involved with the contest.

Brown said the college will benefit more from the contest if more organizations get involved.

She said it does not take much effort to be more sustainable, and with the help of Climate Culture, she hopes more people will find it easier.

 “A lot of times it’s not related to being sacrificial, [it’s related to] energy ... being wasted, which also wastes money,” she said.  “We would be saving money big-time if we changed our everyday habits.”