The Green Hawks Action Team at Hug High School won first prize in this year's GREENevada Student Sustainability Summit. They competed against 12 other high schools from Northern Nevada to win the $5,000 grant to put towards improving their school's energy effeciency. 

The Green Hawks used the Biggest Loser: Energy competition to figure out how much energy their school is currently using. What they discovered was shocking: the school spends about $18,000 a month on energy costs, despite having solar panels on their roof. To cut down on these costs and CO2 emissions, the all-girl Action Team enrolled 25 classrooms in the competition and used a Kil-o-watt device to calculate wattage of each device in these rooms. After the 4-week period, they saved a grand total of 4,038 lbs of CO2 and $299.12 in energy costs. 

While doing the competition, the Green Hawks noticed that the janitors left the lights on in classrooms after hours, costing the school $65.45 a day. They are now working with the lead janitor to develop a plan that doesn't involve leaving the lights on to help them figure out which classrooms still need be cleaned. They plan on putting their grant towards continuing to develop this plan, as well as a plan to purchase energy-saving power strips for their computer labs and installing motion sensors in every classroom.