In Their Words: Intern Kimberly Lam

This series highlights the most important people involved with the Alliance's Green Campus Program: our interns! The program employs more than 75 university and college students across California to implement energy efficiency projects at their campuses. See the entire In Their Words series.

In Kimberly's Words

• Name: Kimberly Lam
• Campus: University of California, Berkeley
• Studying: Environmental Science

One of my favorite Green Campus projects at UC Berkeley is our new “End the Cycle” sustainable laundry campaign. The Berkeley Green Campus team developed this project after realizing that although some students knew washing clothes with cold water saves energy, most did not know how to do this with the residence hall washing machines.  As  freshman using the residence hall washing machines, I never knew which setting to choose: Does "Colors" mean cold water, or "Bright Colors"?  What about the "Delicates & Knits" cycle – what if only part of my load is delicate?  And what does "Permanent Press" even mean?  Turns out everyone should be selecting the “Bright Colors” setting for every wash to save the most energy!

To get students to use the correct setting, we focused our laundry campaign on three components: a static cling sticker on every washing machine telling residents to save energy by choosing the “Bright Colors” setting, a large “Sustainable Laundry Tips” poster for each residence hall laundry room and student family housing unit, and active, in-person laundry tutorials and tabling in dining commons. I created a preliminary survey for students and had a great time interacting with residents. To calculate energy-saving data based on our washing machine and water heater model, I worked with Chris Jones of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at UC Berkeley, who is known for developing a carbon-footprint calculator. We also are collaborating with university housing graphic designers and a local sustainable laundry detergent company to further educate students.

Every resident does laundry regularly (I hope!), so this project has amazing potential to make a big difference. I am very excited for this project because if we can just convince UC Berkeley students to adopt more sustainable laundry practices, they will help conserve valuable energy, save the campus thousands of dollars and reduce our impact on the environment.