Students gathered at 245 Beacon St. on Friday to participate in the second annual Eagles Sustainability Competition. This year, the competition focused on ways to make Boston College Dining more sustainable.
“Each year, we try to change the prompt to try to address a different kind of sustainability,” said Liz Healy, an organizer of the competition and MCAS ’25. “Last year, we wanted to focus on making athletics more sustainable, and this year, our main focus is dining.”
Students in the competition presented different sustainability initiatives to a judging panel of BC Dining representatives, faculty involved in sustainability work, and BC alumni.
The winning team, which earned a $3,000 cash prize for its idea, designed a mobile game incentivizing students to use more sustainable dining options.
“We basically just created all the features that we would want on the app,” said Isa Sylbert, a member of the winning team and MCAS ’26. “We just presented it really focused on student engagement, just getting more students involved in making sustainable choices.”
Sylbert said she and her fellow team members were excited and surprised when they found out they won.
“It was definitely very nice to win,” Sylbert said. “I also enjoyed that there was a collaboration between a lot of different groups on campus.”
This year’s student presenters proposed several sustainability solutions for BC Dining to adopt, some of which built on current programs like BC FRESH, Green2Go, and the waste reduction initiative.
Maggie Furlong, a case competitor and MCAS ’24, said her background in marketing piqued her interest in sustainability.
“I’m always thinking about systems and processes and how everything comes together,” Furlong said. “I think sustainable marketing is definitely important, and my job that I’m heading into next year has to do with renewable energy.”
Ben Wakim, another competitor and CSOM ’24, said his lifelong interest in sustainability initiatives led him to entering the competition.
“I’m a minor in managing for social impact, so I’ve always had an interest in sustainability and ways that we can make Boston College more sustainable, and thought this was a great outlet to do so,” Wakim said.
Similarly to Furlong and Wakim, Declan Soane, MCAS ’24, joined the competition because of his interest in reducing the carbon footprint.
“I’m also a political science major, so I’m really interested in energy policy and just kind of the different ways we can reduce carbon emissions,” Soane said.
In last year’s case competition, which focused on sustainability in athletics, the winning team presented a five-year sustainability plan that impressed the judges, Healy said.
“Last year, we had a variety of teams come up with different solutions, such as reusable cups on game days, different ways of recycling and composting,” Healy said. “The team that ended up winning was an interdisciplinary team of business and [political science], and they had a really great five-year plan on how to address the sustainability issues that athletics has.”
Soane said students should take advantage of the unique opportunity to participate in case competitions during college.
“We actually did a case competition last semester and learned so much about just sort of presentation skills and business skills,” Soane said. “I would say to just do as many of these case competitions as possible because they’re a really great experience.”
With the competition only being in its second year, Healy said there has not been much time to implement last year’s initiatives. Nevertheless, she remains optimistic that BC Dining will be able to implement the sustainability ideas shown at this year’s competition, she said.
“I think that’s a bit of a long process because you have to work with us and athletics, in the administration, and obviously secure funding for that,” Healy said. “But Dining has been such a great partner this year, and I’m hoping a lot of the solutions that students present today will be able to be implemented next year.”
