The 'BioDiesel' project from Crete and 'Campus Climate Solutions' training programme from Florida win the oikos Student Award 2008.

Sustainable Campus Winner: UniDiesel

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.

Curricula Change winner: Campus Climate Solutions

The award in the 'Curricula Change' track was given to the project ‘Campus Climate Solutions’ at the University of Florida run by Alison Erlenbach. Nik Hove received the prize for the project that  trains students in carbon accounting and mitigation options. Students thus training shall be ready to offer carbon services in the market, as well as help the university to comply with their commitment to emit less climate gases.

Winners take part in oikos Winter School

As part of the award, both winning project participated in the oikos Winter School, a one-week intensive training programme for student sustainability entrepreneurs in Witten/Herdecke (Germany). As they already have at least partly implemented their project, both agree that the Winter School has greatly helped them for reflection and future scaling up. As Ioannis summarises: "It is a fantastic experience. You gain a lot of experience, a lot of contacts and its great fun, too!"

Get involved

For more information on the award or the winning projects, visit the website of the oikos Student Award or contact Martin Herrndorf via herrndorf@dont-want-spam.oikosinternational.org