Modifying Habits Towards Sustainability: A Study of Revolving Door Usage on the MIT Campus
During a 2006 study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduate students sought methods to encourage an increase in the use of revolving doors which they knew would conserve energy.
The graduate students were posed with an intriguing question: Can local changes make a big impact? They were encouraged to think of ways in which small changes on a local scale could contribute to sustainable development and eventually help make a global impact. The students learned of two methods that could be used to enact change from discussions led by guest speakers — change could be initiated by grassroots efforts or by targeting the head decision-makers.
The decision was made to pursue the first of these two options through the study, and set out to find a means of implementing change from the bottom-up. They found that the increased use of a revolving door verses a traditional swinging door reduced the loss of conditioned air by as much as eight times.
