oikos Student Entrepreneurship Award

Sustainable Campus

Winner 2009: SSI - Sustainable Campus Initiative, Michigan

Starting with backing from the "Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute", Greg Buzzell, Aaron James and Merry Walker from the Student Sustainability Initiative  connected the 50 student initiatives that somehow relate to the environment at the Campus of Michigan. 100 students have joined, and decided to focus on creating a central office of sustainability and campus green building standards. When University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman announced a new, campus-wide sustainability initiatives on 6 October 2009, she thanks SSI, who had "pushed us to do more throughout the university".

Winner 2008: BioDiesel, Crete

In the 'Sustainable Campus' track, the prize goes to ‘Daedalus’, the world’s "first energy-autonomous biodiesel unit" that uses solar energy to process waste household oil into BioDiesel. A team of engineering students around Ioannis Sarantopoulos has come up with the idea, developed and installed the technology and set up a collection system for the household oil at Crete University in Greece. Daedalus delivers energy to the university since August 2008, an achievement that has not only been embraced by the University staff, but might also lead Ioannis to start his own biodiesel company.




Call 2009 – Sustainable Campus

For the "Sustainable Campus" track, we encouraged applications from student initiatives that make campus life and work more sustainable. This could include projects that:

  • Improve energy efficiency or promote renewable energy on a campus;
  • Reduce waste and establish innovative university recycling programmes;
  • Set up a sustainable mobility system to and on a university campus;
  • Promote organic and fair-trade food in a university cafeteria and restaurant;
  • Change the behaviour of student and faculty members towards sustainability;
  • Enable students to live sustainable on and off campus;
  • Inspire other students to take initiative towards sustainability.
oikos – students for sustainable economics and management