Mike Fackler, a fourth-year Environment, Economy, Development and Sustainability (EEDS) major at The Ohio State University is captain of the first place winning team in the inaugural Ohio State Energy Partners' (ENGIE) and Axium Infrastructure's Smart Campus Challenge.
About the challenge
Teams of three to five students from every Ohio State University campus had the opportunity to propose projects that support the university’s sustainability goals. Six finalist teams pitched their campus sustainability projects to judges on Saturday, February 16.
Wasted Opportunities
First place winner, Wasted Opportunities is a proposed start-up that collects otherwise wasted food from dining locations and food providers to donate to local organizations, while also collecting food waste data to optimize university purchasing patterns.
“The Smart Campus Challenge really was an event that has enabled creativity within sustainability at the university level, which can also expand outside the university,” Mike said during an interview. “For me, we walked into this thing and we were really like, with $54,000 we could really start to do something special with food waste.”
The first-place team will travel to Paris for ENGIE’s Innovation Week in June and be awarded the $54,000 to complete their project. Each team has until the end of spring semester 2020 to complete their sustainability projects.
Read the full article on ENGIE's website here.