You’ve heard of Doctors Without Borders, but how about Engineers Without Borders?
EWB is a movement of professional engineers, students and volunteers which is focused on harnessing the creativity and technical skills engineers are known for to solving some of the problems facing Africans. Getting access to clean water, for example, is one of the most urgent problems facing people in rural Africa.
At pilipiliÂţ», the local chapter of Engineers Without Borders is working hard to raise money to send two volunteers overseas this summer. Dal students Evan MacAdam, a third-year engineering student, and Jenn Nowoselski, in International Development Studies, will be leaving in May for Ghana.
The group’s main fundraiser is selling grilled cheese sandwiches every Friday night at the T-Room on Sexton campus. But at $2 a pop, it’s a lot of cheese to send two volunteers, at $6,500 each, on a EWB placement.
Go Green Challenge
Which is why Emily Stewart, Laura Payne, Jessie MacNeil and Antoine Boyer decided to enter the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation’s Go Green Challenge. The video contest offers up some amazing prizes, including a first prize of $100,000 to support on-campus sustainability initiatives and $20,000 to the winning team. First, second and third prizes are decided by a panel of judges, while the public is invited to vote on the People’s Choice award.
“A few of us were together when I got an email about the contest,” explains Ms. Payne, a fifth-year chemical engineering student. “So we thought, let’s do it up!”
The team, all members of EWB, decided to focus on water and energy use in Dalhousie’s four cafeterias—specifically the “dish pit.” Just the dish pits of the four cafeterias combined use a total of 142,000 litres of water every week—enough to fill three backyard pools with water each week, says Ms. Stewart, a fourth-year student studying environment science and economics and a EWB volunteer in Malawi in 2008.
Solutions
“Water, it’s a scare resource that needs to be conserved in order to be maintained. Only .01 per cent of our water here on Earth is drinkable, without contamination,” informs Mr. Boyer, dressed only in a towel, in the video they submitted in the contest.
The students say more efficient dishwashers, insulated sinks and running the washers only when full would help to cut down on water waste and energy use. They also believe their fellow students could help by scraping their plates better and by not dirtying so many dishes—taking one glass for milk and refilling it, for example, instead of filling up nine glasses all at once.
They believe behavioral change is possible, citing the cafeteria’s move to get rid of trays as a water-saving move a few years ago. At the time, some students were incensed that the convenience of a tray was being taken away, but Mr. Boyer, in his first year of engineering at pilipiliÂţ», says filling up a plate and sitting down with it is now just the way it works. “What you don’t know, you don’t miss,” he says.
Other Dal groups entered too
The EWB team isn’t the only group of students at pilipiliÂţ» to enter the Go Green Challenge with their video on reducing water and energy use in cafeteria dish pits. See:
Hailey Horachek and Fiona Chetty advocate selling Dalhousie merchandise that’s been made locally:
Sam Littlefair Wallace and Claire Zimmerman propose establishing a student garden and kitchen:
Gillian Pritchard and Robin Tress says Dal needs to repair its water fountains or install new ones in order to take the next step towards banning bottled water on campus:
The public has until March 11 to view the videos and vote for their favourite green idea. Winners will be announced March 16.
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