During the month of August, 28 northeast Ohio workplaces are competing against each other to help reduce air pollution by lowering greenhouse gases produced by their employee’s commutes. The NEO Clean Air Challenge is a part of Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA)’s Commuter’s Choice Awards. CWRU has competed annually in the Awards since 2014. In 2018, we were only one of two workplaces to earn the silver status. Individual employees can help CWRU gain points by participating in the NEO Clean Air Challenge and logging your commute drives, bike rides, carpools, etc. The Challenge counts for 30% of our overall score in the Awards, so every trip counts!
Area organizations that participate in the Commuter Challenge are encouraging their employees to log commutes via Gohio Commute to compete for the largest reduction in commuting trips. Use our custom CWRU subsite to log in or create your account. Then, log your daily commutes (up to two trips per day), whether they are via car, bus, walking, carpool, bike, or any other means. Even if you are just driving yourself to work by yourself, logging your commute provides our office with valuable data about the university's carbon footprint. Commutes can be retroactively logged for two weeks. We offer a tutorial on their website to help users get started on the site.
Participants that log their commutes are eligible to win weekly raffle prizes such as bring your own kits that include a Klean Kanteen water bottle, metal straws, sporks, and a reusable lunchbox. A regional leaderboard will show off which workplaces and individual are both logging and reducing emissions the most.
The Commuter Choice Awards are sponsored by NOACA, the City of Cleveland Office of Sustainability, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, and Laketran.