Our team decided to focus on the issue of unsustainable consumption in the United States looking at college students in particular. What is sustainability? To put it plainly it is the ability to sustain, or put another way the capacity to endure. Sustainability is about our future and our a legacy, not the convience of today. North America has only 8% of the world population, but consumes one-third of the worlds resources. This shows just how much impact we have on the world, and the decsions we make as individuals in the United States have an impact on people all over the world. College students in particular have a large impact because they are going to be the leaders of the future and therfore need to be educated on how to act sustianably or we risk enviornmental consequences for future generations. In the United States 24.5 million tons of trash are produced by college students annually. There are 76.4 million college students in the United States, and on average they produce 640 pounds of trash annually. This comes out to be over 10% of the annual national waste generation in the United States. This shows just how big of an impact that college students have on the world. This brings us into our solution which is to target college students, teach them sustainable habits, and reward them for their environmentally concious habits. How we propose to accomplish this is by partnering with a sustainability app on the market today called PIPs rewards. PIPs stands for positive impact points and each point is worth 1 penny US, and the app rewards students that perform sustianable behaviors with PIPs which they can then use to buy food, lyft rides, and even pay paart of their tutiton. When bringing PIPs to DU we want to make some changes to the app to make it better susited for the University of Denver's students. We propose adding a geolocation feature that will tell all users where their are locations that they can earn pips around du, how many pips they can earn, and how long they will be avaiable. The second feature is focused on educating students on how best to recycle. We propose adding a trash database that users can use to look up any type of trash and learn how to best dispose of it. The last feature we want to add is ongoing challenges. PIPs has already had challenges in the past, but they only last for a week and then they are no longer available. We want to make challenges to earn pips points that will be open all year, so you can trach your progress and challenge yourself to be more sustainable while using the app day to day. We really want to emphasize one feature of the app that has a huge impact. It is called the PIPs education fund, a seprate nonprofit entity from PIPs that funds users tutiton by matching any pips points that users put towards their tution 1 for 1. That means if a student puts $50 towards their tution it will actually total $100. This si the main way that DU will recup their investment, we project that by the second year their will be a positive ROI for the Unviersity. For a fifty thousand dollar annual subscription the university will recieve a pool of five million pips that users will be able to earn from. Compared to all other apps on the market PIPs in the only one that has the education fund and geolocation features, setting them apart from the competition. The social impact we want to have is an increased diversion rate at DU, so more trash is ending up in recycling or compost, a change in students behavior to be more sustainable, and to foster a culture of sustainability on campus at the Unviersity of Denver. Overall this isn't just a project for our team, we really believe that bringing pips to campus will have a huge impact and we are already working to bring them to campus.

Meet the Team

Hello All & Welcome to Team Sustainability. Below you will find brief bios of each of our team members. If you would like to get to know them furhter, please click on the link on the righthand side of the page. We hope you enjoy getting to know each of us.

Delaney Bensler

Delaney Bensler is a Steamboat Springs, CO native and a senior in the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. She is currently pursuing a dual degree in marketing and international business with a minor in legal studies. Ms. Bensler is currently a dean’s list student, as well as an ethics boot camp leader. Delaney has extensive experience in leadership and management, as well as marketing- serving as the current Vice President of Membership Recruitment for an on campus organization of over 120 members. As graduation nears, Delaney intends to begin her MBA education in the fall of 2019. When not working, Delaney enjoys traveling, spending time with her family and furry friends, and exploring all the incredible restaurants Denver has to offer.

Kellie Klipka

Kelli Klipka grew up in Arvada, Colorado and is a junior at Univerisity of Denver majoring in business management and political science. Kelli has experience in nonprofit work and aspires to continue making an impact in the nonprofit world after graduation. She is currently the Finance Chair for the Student Advisory Council of the Arts Humanities and Social Sciences and a Daniels Ethics Fellow. In her free time, Kelli enjoys playing Rugby with the University of Denver Women's Rugby team, and spending time with family friends, and her dog Eliza.

Tyler Payson

Tyler Payson is a third year student pursuing a major in international business with two minors in finance and business analytics. Tyler is interested in pursuing a career in sustainable energy, as well as development in Central America. In his free free time he likes to ski during the winter, and sail during the summer. Tyler was fortunate to have Vail Resorts as his ski playground as well as Bow Mar Lake in Littleton, Co for sailing.  

Hongjia Xu

Hongjia is an international student originally from China. This is his sixth year in the U.S. As a current junior student at DU, he is double majoring in Business Information Analytics and Finance. He has spent two years in Honolulu, Hawaii for high school and found that it is a perfect place for vacation and always want to go back there for vacation. Hongjia enjoys watching the cooking videos to learn how to cook different recipes and he likes extreme sports such as Bungee jump and sky diving. He believed that he will be an expert in financial analysis area to help people make wise financial decisions in the future.  He used his data analysis skills to support the team. He exited to help with this project and hope the project can make a little impact on Colorado's sustainability issues.