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August 07, 2007, 03:28 PM ET
A Competition for the Planet
Ithaca, N.Y. — Cynthia Nolt-Helms, from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, came to a community-college conference at Cornell University to promote the P3 design competition. P3, which was started in 2004, has an unwieldy, longer name: People, Prosperity, and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability.
The P3 program gives grants to students who design exemplary products (the second P is “prosperity,” after all) that contribute to a sustainable world. There are six design areas: agriculture, the built environment, materials and chemistry, energy, information technology, and water.
Past winners have included the Rochester Institute of Technology, whose team designed solar ovens to be sold in the developing world. Oberlin College designed a real-time energy monitor, which can help people track and conserve energy.
The competition has two phases. In the first phase, students submit ideas and plans to compete for $10,000, which would be used to design a product. The best student designs win $75,000, which could be used to develop the designs and market them as products. The winning products go on display at the National Sustainable Design Expo, on the National Mall.
Ms. Nolt-Helms said that work on a P3 project can wind up as a scholarly article published in a journal, and can help meet the requirements for a credit course. A P3 project also provides an opportunity for collaboration among students from different disciplines. A project can also be good PR for TV and radio spots.
She said that one of her perennial disappointments is that her program doesn’t have more money for student projects.
“We can’t take money from industry,” she said. “We’re the federal government, and we don’t want to show favoritism.”
That comment made nearly everyone in the room laugh.
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