Celebrate Earth Day 2009 on the Campus Green

UWG Earth Day 2009 will have something for everyone including cotton candy.

Curtis Hollabaugh, Georgina DeWeese and Randa Harris, fraternities and sororities, the Geosciences Club and the Geography Honor Society, have planned one of the largest Earth Days to be held on campus. A Miss Earth Day Pageant, where contestants don only costumes made from recycled products, Earth Day tee shirts, snow cones, a guest appearance by Wolfie and recycling tubs for ink cartridges, cell phones and aluminum, are some of the green (and blue) attractions for the event.

A traditional Earth Day tree planting will also take place on campus. At 2:30 p.m., three kwanzan cherry trees will be planted near the Calloway Building’s annex. James Hembree, UWG horticulturalist, will provide the trees and dig the holes and Harris will coordinate the planting with students. The three 10-foot trees will replace the much-loved cherry tree taken down during construction of the addition to Calloway.  

Eat Green

Not to be outdone, Aramark will celebrate Earth Day all week long April 20 – 24.

Food and Auxiliary Services will help the green effort Monday through Friday with a different energy saving technique each day. Trayless Dining Day will save hundreds of gallons of water; Dim the Lights Day, Weigh the Waste Day, Recycling Day for cell phones and an Earth Day Meal will help the campus community think and eat green. More details will be available soon on the Aramark site.  

Green is a Grassroots Campus Effort

Here are a few thoughts by Patrick Erben, assistant professor of English, on an independent recycling program set up one year ago in the TLC.
 
“We started this program in spring 2008 as an initiative of the English students, staff and faculty to highlight socially and environmentally conscious action as a direct outgrowth of critical thinking, reading and writing practiced in our discipline.             

"In cooperation with our philosophy program and the department of computer sciences, we purchased, out of departmental funds, a set of aesthetically pleasing recycling stations, which are located on the  second floor of the TLC, in the corridor between English/Philosophy and Computer Sciences. The stations are set up to allow the separate collection of newspapers, paper, cardboard, aluminum cans, and plastic drink containers.

"Since there is no university-wide collection of all these recyclable materials, I coordinate a volunteer pickup system. Student, staff and faculty volunteers sign up for bi-weekly 'shifts,' when they check the stations, empty them and drop off the recyclables at one of the Carroll County Convenience Centers.

"The stations have been extremely well-received by the student/staff/faculty population working in or frequenting our floor.  Even though paper is collected in faculty/staff offices, this station seems to represent the only comprehensive recycling station on our campus.  The plastics and aluminum stations in particular fill up very quickly, which demonstrates the need for more large scale recycling of such commonplace materials.

"We think that this grassroots effort coordinated on an inter-departmental level works well for our purposes; nevertheless, an expansion of recycling to the campus overall (especially to classroom buildings/floors, residence halls, etc) would probably require a more centralized system of disposing the materials. Relying on a volunteer system would probably be logistically cumbersome for expanding recycling to the campus overall.  What our program demonstrates very impressively, I think, is the immediate acceptance and responsible use of this recycling facility and thus the general eagerness of our community to participate in recycling.”
 
Happy Earth Day.