The students put themselves into eight different groups for this week, all having to do with promoting sustainable behaviors to help the earth. Every day during the school week had a different theme. These being land, air, water, food and culmination.
“All the eight different groups have different projects all with a main goal of just having a positive environmental impact,” said Tom Durr, a student in the sustainable living class. “It’s to reduce solid waste buildup in Cache Valley specifically in land-fills.”
One group was all about promoting the Powder Wagon—the carpool from Logan to Beaver Mountain in the winter.
“Our plan for this week was just to get the word out about the Powder Wagon for next season,” said Nate McPherron, a student in the sustainable living class.
“I think we’re trying to create awareness with the importance of car-pooling along with Cache Valley air quality in the winter,” said David England, another student in the class. “We put a survey out and 70% of the students out of 3000 that took the survey, said that they were interested in taking the Powder Wagon but had no idea it existed.”
Another group hosted a free store on the Taggart Student Center patio. Different items donated by students were laid out on tables and others could come and take whatever they wanted. Donating unwanted things to other students keeps it out of landfills, according to Durr.
“We’re hoping to get an on-campus location to make it more convenient,” said Durr about the free store. “We’ve tried to contact a bunch of different facilitators at the TSC and College of Natural Resources, but I feel like they aren’t completely committed to the idea yet. We are taking signatures for petitions to get commitment and show that this could be something on campus that could have a similar impact kind of like Aggie Blue Bikes. That was a project that started similar to this and now they are doing great.”
Earth Week wasn’t a planned activity from the beginning of the semester for the class.
“We didn’t think we were going to do a whole week dedicated to sustainability,” Brain said. “It actually just blossomed out of the first week of class where I joked about doing an earth week and then here we are--it’s actually happening.”
“All of this was planned by the students,” Brain said. “They coordinated all of this by themselves. I gave them the foundation and they just ran with it.”
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