Tips

How can you help promote sustainability and practice it at the College? This page is a list of tips and tricks to help you out with living sustainably!

    • Try to take shorter showers. Do the math: if a shower uses 2 gallons of water a minute, and you take a shower every day, making each shower one minute shorter will save about 60 gallons of water a month. You’ll also conserve energy, since you’ll be using less hot water.
    • Report any leaks, dripping faucets, or toilets that don’t stop filling to your custodian or landlord.
    • Wash clothes only when you have a full load and save up to 600 gallons of water each month.
    • Turn off the water while you brush your teeth or shave.
    • Eat less beef and pork. Poultry takes much less water and energy to produce than beef and pork, and vegetarian sources of protein take even less than poultry.
    • Replace dishwashers and washing machines that no longer work with water-efficient models. Such models also save energy by using less water.
    • Choose fish certified by the Marine Stewardship Council or on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “best choice” list.
    • Shop at farmers’ markets to support regional agriculture if it is an affordable option.
    • Make an effort to eat within the season. That means striving to eat food grown close to home: strawberries in June, but parsnips in March.
    • Eat more whole foods and fewer processed foods.
    • Support nutrition education and food awareness programs in schools.
    • Turn off your lights whenever you leave. (Turning on and off lights does not waste more power than leaving them on. That’s a myth.)
    • Take advantage of natural light! Open the shades during the day for lighting and heating your room or office, close them at night to keep heat in.
    • Be sure to use only Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs in all your lights. They use 75% less energy than incandescents (normal bulbs) and last 10 times longer. There is now a much wider selection of styles and sizes of CFL bulbs than there was several years ago. Even if you were disappointed with CFL’s before, it’s worth trying them again.
    • Turn off lights in bathrooms and common areas. Talk to suite-mates, floor-mates, and coworkers about keeping the lights off when nobody is using common areas.
    • Keep your thermostat at 68-70 degrees. If you feel cold at that temperature, makes sure to wear warm socks and either a turtleneck or a scarf.
    • Turn your computer off when you aren’t using it. Contrary to what you might have heard, turning your computer off when you aren’t using it is not bad for its hardware.
    • Set your computer and monitor to go into sleep / stand by when they’re inactive for too long. A computer in sleep mode uses about 5% the energy of one running a “screen saver”. You can find instructions for enabling power management at the Williams College Office For Information Technology’s green computing page.
    • Beware of Vampires! ‘Vampire’ devices draw power even when they are not being used. These include anything with an adapter or charger such as cell phone chargers, lap top cords, printers, speakers… The best thing to do is keep such devices on a power strip and turn the strip off when you’re not using it.
    • Avoid unneeded personal refrigerators. Can you share a refrigerator with your roommate, entry, dorm, or office? If you decide that you really need one, purchase an energy star refrigerator and set the temperature to between 36 and 42 degrees. Empty it out and unplug it during breaks and vacations.
    • Wash clothes on the cold water (or “bright colors”) setting to save energy and help your clothes last longer.
    • Clean out the lint trap on the dryer before every load to improve air circulation.
    • Wash and dry full loads
    • Air dry clothing on a clothes line or drying rack.
    • Recycle all paper (but re-use one sided!), cans, bottles, batteries, printer cartridges, etc. A recent waste audit at Williams found that nearly half of what was in the trash could have been recycled, composted or re-used.
    • Try to use re-usable containers instead of disposable. Fill and use a water bottle, bring your own coffee mug, and take advantage of the re-usable to-go containers at Whitman's.
    • Print double sided. Some public printers have that as the default, but check anyway. Williams Office for Information Technology has directions for setting a printer to duplex printing.
    • Avoid printing documents multiple times by paying attention to where you print. Are you sending your document to the right place? Is that printer online?
    • Use cloth towels to dry your hands instead of the paper towels in the bathroom.
    • Donate unwanted items to Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or another charity rather than throwing them out. If you are a student, participate in Give It Up - the end of the year donation drive when moving out of your dorm.
    • Properly dispose of computer related e-waste through the end of the year Green Up computer recycling program.