WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Jim Danielson and Sean Kleinschmidt spent the summer before their freshman year at Purdue University turning a Porsche with a blown engine into an electric-powered vehicle.

Their red, 1987 924S will be one of the featured vehicles at the alternative and fuel-efficient transportation show that is part of Purdue’s Green Week. The show will be from noon to 4 p.m. Thursday (Sept. 24) on the west side of Stewart Center.

Danielson of Arlington Heights, Ill., and Kleinschmidt of Prospect Heights, Ill., are high school friends who are now first-year engineering students. They started work on the car in late May and finished in early August.

They bought the Porsche for $500, then sold parts from it that they didn’t need for about the same amount. They spent about $6,000 on the conversion. They hope to get $4,000 of that back through an Illinois program that rebates costs for alternative-power conversions.

The car runs on a deep-cycle, lead acid marine battery and a forklift motor. At this point, it can reach a speed of 55 miles an hour. But the Porsche has a range of only about 50 miles on each battery charge, so Danielson and Kleinschmidt will bring it to West Lafayette on a trailer.

The Purdue Sustainability Council is sponsoring the Green Week transportation show. It also will feature vehicles from Purdue’s hybrid fleet, student-built solar race cars, a battery-powered Volkswagen Beetle built by a professor, a Volkswagen Rabbit converted to run on biodiesel fuel including used vegetable oil, and even a motorized couch.

Judged and people’s choice awards will be given in the fuel-efficient and alternative-powered categories.

Alternative and fuel-efficient vehicles still can be entered in the show. To enter, e-mail Robin Ridgway, Purdue’s director of sustainability and environmental stewardship, at rmridgway@purdue.edu

Also during the transportation show, the Boiler Green Initiative will offer free bicycle tune-ups.

More information on Green Week is available at http://www.purdue.edu/sustainability/

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University is taking its pilot desk-side recycling program campus-wide in an effort to significantly boost recycling rates.

The program, launched at Freehafer Hall in July, provides recycling bins at workers’ desks, but requires them to walk to a central location to deposit trash.

Within four weeks worker participation reached 99.5 percent and recycling volume doubled. After tweaking the program based on feedback from Freehafer staffers, Physical Facilities introduced the program to the Civil Engineering Building in August. First-week staff participation topped 99 percent, and recycled volume increased more than 50 percent.

Director of building services Terry Ashlock said the program will be expanded to five more buildings this week.

“The program has validated our assumptions that people want to do what they can to help the environment, particularly if collection systems accommodate their lifestyles,” Ashlock said. “With this customer-focused approach, we significantly impacted human behavior without taxing our custodial staff.”

Desk-side recycling will be implemented at six more buildings this semester, including three new buildings that come on line this fall: Discovery Learning Center and Hockmeyer and Niswonger halls. Beginning in January the program will be implemented in 10 buildings at a time until rollout is complete.

Desk-side recycling is a key component in Purdue’s comprehensive plan to boost the campus recycling rate to 65 percent by 2014. That plan will be presented to the public on Monday (Sept 21) as a kickoff to Purdue Green Week 2009.

In the 2008-09 academic year, Purdue increased its overall recycling rate to 48 percent and reduced the amount of trash sent to the landfill by 500 tons. A consultant helped Physical Facilities implement or expand a number of tools. Collaboration with other university administrators and student leaders led to advancements including: roll-off recycling containers at residence halls, football game day recycling and sending tons of food waste to an anaerobic digester at the West Lafayette water treatment plant to create methane to power the plant.

“We’re fostering a culture of sustainability that is directly aligned with the university’s goal of meeting global challenges,” said Martha May, senior director of building and grounds. “We’re determined to have Purdue recognized as a national leader in sustainability initiatives.”

For the 2009-10 academic year, Physical Facilities has added 31 exterior recycling containers in high-volume pedestrian areas and purchased a high-powered industrial shredder that breaks plastic, wood and metal into sellable byproducts that no longer go to a landfill. The university also will install larger dumpsters for recyclables and smaller dumpsters for trash.

Grounds director Gary Evans said that after 15 years of formal recycling, Purdue will focus on increasing the raw volume of recycling rather than asking people to separate their recylables into several categories.

“We will maximize Purdue’s recycling rate by the most cost-effective and efficient means,” Evans said.

Physical Facilities Building & Grounds has established a recycling assessment team that will continue to help document, analyze and publicize recycling efforts, and adapt and expand successful practices on an ongoing basis. That process for change has already implemented dual-stream recycling, which allows the separation of office paper from personal recyclables such as mixed paper, plastic, aluminum, Styrofoam and glass.

Next semester Purdue will participate for the first time in Recyclemania!, a national contest that pits universities from across the nation against each other to see who can recycle the most. Organizers are on campus during Green Week 2009 to help prepare Purdue for the competition and Physical Facilities is hiring a student to oversee the effort. For more information, visit http:///www.purdue.edu/sustainability

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University Residences is turning greener with its latest efforts to reduce water and energy consumption.

Residents of McCutcheon, Harrison, Earhart and Shreve halls are having a competition to cut down energy and water use, and the winner will be announced on Earth Day (April 22).

“Residents are unplugging appliances not in use, turning off lights when not needed, not using heat and air-conditioning at the same time, shortening showers, and turning off water while brushing their teeth,” said Carmen Martin, a member of Boiler Green Initiative, a club dedicated to conservation measures on campus. “Participants in the contest are being entered in a raffle for prizes, and the floor of the winning building with the highest participation gets a dessert social.”

In another attempt to reduce waste, the new dining court south of Wiley Hall is piloting a program called “Waste Less Wednesdays.” Each Wednesday this month, diners won’t use trays in an effort to save food and the energy used to clean trays.

“There are several colleges and universities around the country that have gone trayless and realized a substantial decrease in food waste,” said Jill Irvin, director of Dining Services for University Residences. “We’ve been discussing this idea for several months and seeing how we might best test it. Some of our staff visited the University of Illinois earlier this spring to observe their trayless operation. It was after this trip that the pilot program was finalized.”

For the most part, students have responded positively to the program, Irvin said.

“It’s a great idea,” said Andy Jones, a junior in the College of Technology. “On Waste Less Wednesdays, students eat all the food they take instead of heaping their trays with items and not eating them.

“The dining court is an all-you-can-eat facility anyway. Without trays, students may have to make an extra trip to get more food, but there’s never any limit to what they can eat.”

Nate Reed, a student supervisor at the dining court, said dishes get cleaned faster and the trash cans look less full on Waste Less Wednesdays.

“Whenever I get a tray, I fill it up and mostly don’t eat half of the things,” he said. “But if it’s plates, I take smaller portions and eat the food. And you can always get more plates if you’re still hungry.”

University Residences is the single biggest recycler on campus, said Barbara Frazee, University Residences executive director.

Last September, University Residences was among the sponsors of the university’s Green Week, which encouraged students to reduce, reuse and recycle resources such as water, electricity, food, paper and aluminum.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Office of Information Technology at Purdue is inviting the university community to get creative during Green Week activities, set for Sept. 15-19.

During the “Show You’re Green” contest, students, faculty and staff can create a podcast of 60 seconds or less to share their eco-friendly ideas and best suggestions for going green as individuals, as a campus and as a community. Two workstations at information technology’s Shopping Offline store, located in Stewart Center, Room G65, will be available from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 15-18 to create and submit podcasts.

“The Office of Information Technology at Purdue is always on the lookout for ways to conserve power and reduce waste,” said Gerry McCartney, Purdue’s chief information officer and vice president for information technology. “Through this podcast competition, we’re challenging students to come up with their own green ideas for the campus and community.”

The submitted podcasts will be viewable on the Internet moments after they are created from a link on Purdue’s Green Week Web site at http://www.purdue.edu/green.

The first 300 students to create podcasts will receive a free reusable shopping bag from Apple. Students who submit podcasts will compete for a prize package of eco-friendly products, which will be awarded for the best entries for individual, campus and community ideas. Podcasts will be evaluated on the uniqueness, feasibility and scalability of the green suggestions. The prize package includes an EcoSmart laptop bag from Targus and Dell, along with a 1G iPod shuffle, an emergency cell phone charger from AT&T, a surge protector from CDW-G, and other gifts.

The Information Technology at Purdue student advisory council will judge submissions, and winners will be announced on Sept. 24.

Apple Computer, AT&T, CDW-G, Dell Computer and Targus are joining the Office of Information Technology at Purdue in sponsoring the event.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University will sponsor Green Week on Sept. 15-19 to raise environmental awareness on campus and in the Greater Lafayette community.

Each day will focus on one aspect of preserving the environment and practicing conservation. There will be opportunities for students, faculty and staff, and community members to participate throughout the week.

“We need to all start talking about what we do every day,” said Robin Ridgway, Purdue’s environmental regulatory consultant and chair of the Purdue Sustainability Council.

“The value of Green Week is in encouraging conversation about sustainability and what it means for Purdue and the broader community. We need to move together as a group.”

Sustainability is defined as meeting current needs in ways that won’t compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Purdue has launched a green Web site at http://www.purdue.edu/green. It offers information on Purdue’s green initiatives, tips on conservation and an interactive portion where people can write about their environmental successes.

The Web site will be ongoing, but it also is serving as a clearinghouse for information about Green Week, including constantly updated lists of activities.

Each day of Green Week will have a theme: Monday, sustainability; Tuesday, reduce, reuse, recycle; Wednesday, energy; Thursday, research; and Friday, water. Events are still being developed but are likely to include activities such as clean-up efforts, recycling opportunities and incentives for trying alternative transportation.

Green Week will culminate with a full day of programs Friday, Sept. 19, and a speech that night by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author Thomas Friedman.

Discovery Park’s Energy Center, Center for the Environment and Purdue Climate Change Research Center plan a morning of lectures by outside experts on the environment, conservation and energy, and an afternoon town hall forum, all free and open to the public.

“The centers are collaborating on these Green Week activities to spark a lively discussion of research and reality at the intersection of climate, environment, energy technology alternatives and policy,” said Jay Gore, the Reilly Professor in Engineering and Energy Center director. “As a community, we will explore the new paths we must take to determine how we can live and grow our global community.”

A cleanup along the banks of the Wabash River is planned for late afternoon, with volunteers from both the campus and community pitching in to collect trash.

Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, will speak at 7:30 p.m. in Elliott Hall of Music about his latest book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America.” He will sign books after the talk.

The speech is free and open to the public, but reserved tickets are required. Tickets can be picked at the Hall of Music box office between 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Tickets also can be reserved by calling the box office at (765) 494-3933.

“The impetus for Green Week was Tom Friedman’s visit,” Ridgway said. “Friedman’s writings focus on the importance of having a very serious conversation about what’s happening now and what we can do in the future.”