ASU is giving 15 teams from Arizona high schools a chance to throw sustainability to the dogs.
Ten high schools across the state will compete to build sustainable doghouses as part of the Desert Doghouse contest, hosted by the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, the Del E. Webb School of Construction and ASU’s Emerging Green Builders.
The students will create doghouses using only recycled or repurposed materials.
Lisa Hogle, event manager for the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, said the purpose of the contest is to help students incorporate what they’re learning in school into real life.
“It introduces them to ASU and to the world of ‘green,’” Hogle said. “It shows that connection with what we’re learning here in school and what can happen when they go out into the workforce.”
Design studies senior and President of ASU Emerging Green Builders Carly Jacobson was one of the students who brought the idea to ASU. The contest is meant to educate high school students about sustainability, she said.
“We really wanted a way for high school students to become involved in the green-building movement,” Jacobson said, adding that she’s excited to see what the teams come up with because she has heard talk of highly technical designs.
“It’s really going to just depend on how [the teams] were able to creatively solve this problem of designing a sustainable doghouse,” she said.
The doghouses will be judged on several criteria including size, design and the use of recycled or repurposed materials, Hogle said.
Judging will take place on Oct. 24 in an event that is free and open to the public at ASU.
The winning team will receive passes to the 2009 Greenbuild Expo — an event hosted by the U.S. Green Building Council that highlights the tenets of living green and sustainable. The team’s doghouse will also be displayed at the Expo in November, Hogle said.
In conjunction with the Greenbuild Expo, the other doghouses will be auctioned off at block parties in Tempe and Scottsdale. Proceeds from the auction will benefit Habitat for Humanity to build a green house in Phoenix, she said.
Marie Coleman, a communications associate for U.S. Green Building Council, said in an e-mail that the Desert Doghouse competition helps to encourage students to learn more about green living.
“This is a fun and engaging way to get young people interested and involved in the green movement,” she said. “By displaying the winning design at Greenbuild, students can learn more about [sustainable buildings] ... perhaps inspiring these students to choose a career in the green building, design or construction industry one day.”
Reach the reporter at allison.gatlin@asu.edu.
