Currier Wins Green Cup

Currier House will take home a giant green keg—and $1,035—following its victory yesterday afternoon in the annual Green Cup competition.

The keg may be of use in Currier’s Cup Waste Reduction project, which aims to eventually hold an Earth-friendly—and cup-free—Stein Club and was undertaken as part of the Green Cup Challenge.

“We’ve started at BYOC—C for cup—Stein Club,” Currier House resident Robert M. Koenig ’06 said.

MaryEmily K. Colvin ’05, Currier’s representative for the Resource Efficiency Program (REP), accepted the award on behalf of her House when REP co-captain Allison I. Rogers ’04 announced the winners during Earth Day yesterday.

The seemingly superfluous $35 of the $1,035 prize symbolizes the 35 years that the competition has pitted Houses against each other in the name of encouraging energy conservation and recycling.

Although Currier’s “challenge team” did not win any prizes for its Cup Waste Reduction program, that section of the competition only accounts for one-third of the tabulation to determine the winner of the Green Cup.

REP officials could not release yesterday the individual House results on improvements in electricity conservation, steam usage and recycling—which make up the other two-thirds of the competition.

Currier can choose to invest the $1,035 in future projects aimed at promoting environmental consciousness—or just in a House study break.

Koenig, who presented the “Reduce Cup Waste” project in a challenge team showcase Wednesday, said yesterday that Currier deserved the victory.

“Currier’s symbol is the tree, so its only natural that we should have the cup,” he said. “Fear the tree.”

At Wednesday’s panel, three different Currier House challenge teams, as well as eight challenge teams from other Houses and the Yard, presented their projects to a panel of four judges from the Harvard Green Campus Initiative and Harvard’s recycling and waste management and physical resources offices.

The winning projects included Quincy House’s “Wind Energy Project,” and the Yard’s “Celebrating Life with the Earth Charter,” each of which won a $250 gift certificate similar to the grand prize awarded with the Green Cup.

The judges jointly awarded another $250 to Cabot House’s “Quad Bikes” project, which fixes and sells student bikes, and Kirkland House’s “Bike Sharing Program,” which rents bikes out for free.

While Colvin said the Currier House challenge teams have not yet met to discuss what they want to do with their winnings, she added that they have many creative projects to choose from.

Doug D. Bennett ’04 is working on a project to build an indoor organic garden to brighten up Currier House’s drab basement hallways, while Colvin has suggested a student-run compost bin.