Pitt Challenges Students to Make One-off Products Reusable in Second Annual “Green” Design Contest
Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation offers $5,000 cash prize to Southwestern Pennsylvania undergrads who create multiuse replacements for common, single-use products, following up the 2008 challenge to affordably upgrade old buildings
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Morgan Kelly
[412-624-4356
(office); 412-897-1400 (cell); mekelly@pitt.edu]
Despite the
fashionable chatter about sustainability and all things “green,” countless
products from plastic bottles and carpeting to cleaning products and packaging
remain single-use and are frequently discarded in landfills and the
environment.
To spark ideas for rendering the disposable reusable, the University of
Pittsburgh’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation has challenged
undergraduate students in Southwestern Pennsylvania to create multiuse
replacements for one-off products, processes, or services. The cash-prize 2009-10
Undergraduate Design Challenge seeks enhanced versions of everyday items
that diminish waste and consumption, be it through longer lifetimes, potential
for reuse, or decreased energy and water use during manufacturing.
The students’ inventions will be judged for originality and the possibility of
successful implementation. The winning team receives $5,000; second-place receives
$2,500; and third-place, $1,000. Teams of two-to-five students from any
university or college in Allegheny, Butler, Washington, and Westmoreland
counties are eligible to participate. Students are encouraged to form
multidisciplinary and cross-institutional teams. Project concepts are due Oct.
21. Five finalist teams will be announced Nov. 4, and each will receive a
$1,500 grant for supplies, equipment, travel, and other project expenses. The
winning team will be announced April 30, 2010. Complete rules and deadlines are
available on the Mascaro Center’s Web site at www.mascarocenter.pitt.edu
This latest challenge follows the Mascaro Center’s inaugural 2008 design
competition, which prompted students in the region to create a technique for
“greening” old buildings that would reduce electricity consumption and pay for
itself within one year. Rising juniors Micah Toll, a mechanical engineering
student in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, and Shaun Espenshade, a
rhetoric and classics student at Duquesne University, netted the $5,000
first-place prize for constructing a lightweight plastic wind turbine and
augmenting it with a rundown of useful—and often obscure—tips for reducing
home-power consumption. Older buildings commonly hemorrhage energy because of
poor insulation, old wiring, and outdated lighting. Outfitting them with
energy-conserving features is a considerable issue in such areas as Pittsburgh
where many buildings and homes were built before 1940. More information on the
2008 winners is available on Pitt’s Web site at www.chronicle.pitt.edu/?p=3098
Based in Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, the Mascaro Center specializes
in sustainable design and engineering, particularly the development of
sustainable neighborhoods. The center encourages and nurtures collaborative
projects that translate the fundamental science of sustainability into real
products and processes that positively impact the environment and improve
quality-of-life. Projects include greening the built environment, developing more
sustainable water use, and designing distributed power systems.
There is always newsworthy research and events happening in the Swanson School of Engineering.
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