Earth Week
April 20, 2010
In celebration of Earth Day’s 40th anniversary on April 22, the DePauw Environmental Club and Office for Sustainability have joined together to offer a weeklong schedule of events.
Earth Day was founded in 1970 as an environmental teach-in by United States Senator Gaylord A. Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin. It is celebrated throughout the world and is a day to provoke thought about all things green, inspiring us to take action.
DePauw Environmental Club President Hannah N. Ramage ’11 says that Earth Week is the club’s biggest event of the year. Instead of a one-day event, the club extended activities to span a full week, with water as this year's environmental focus.
“In the past we’ve changed the theme each day,” Ramage says. “However, this year, we decided on water as an overarching theme because as we began planning, it became a clear theme connecting our events.”
“What’s great about Earth Week is that other people and clubs get involved to help organize the events,” Ramage adds. “It has extended beyond the Environmental Club, which is great because everybody should be celebrating it.”
Multiple coordinators have helped to organize this year’s Earth Week. Ramage is working closely with the other club members as well as with fifth-year sustainability intern Melissa “Missy!” Orr ’09.
The week’s schedule of events included a water walk sponsored by Feminista!, a non-hierarchical, multicultural feminist and women’s rights activist campus organization. Feminista! is dedicated to social justice and human rights for all people, including women, people of color, the LGTBQ community and other marginalized groups.
“The last several years, Feminista! has presented an event that links women and the environment,” Ramage says. “The water walk encourages students to think about women in other parts of the world having to walk to collect drinking water for their families.”
The students demonstrated this issue by carrying buckets of water around campus to gain appreciation for what it feels like for women who do it daily.
“The goal is to better understand that not only do we have water and we don’t have to walk to get it, but it’s clean,” Ramage says. “It raises awareness about the fact that we don’t have to go through the struggle to get clean water, but also about how privileged we are to have clean tap water all around us.”
The DePauw Environmental Club and Feminista! are planning a water walk at Relay For Life this weekend to encourage further awareness of this issue.
On Tuesday, April 20 at 7:30 p.m. in the Pulliam Center for Contemporary Media’s Watson Forum, poet and biologist Sandra Steingraber will present Contamination Without Consent. Her book is titled Living Down Stream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment.
The Washington Post describes her work: “In her early twenties, Steingraber was afflicted with cancer, a disease that has afflicted other members of her adoptive family. Writing from the twin perspectives of a survivor and a concerned scientist, she traces the high incidence of cancer and the terrifying concentrations of environmental toxins in her native rural Illinois.
“She goes on to show similar correlation in other communities, such as Boston and Long Island, and throughout the United States, where cancer rates have risen alarmingly since mid-century.
“At once a deeply moving personal document and a groundbreaking work of scientific detection, Living Downstream will be a touchstone for generations, reminding us of the intimate connection between the health of our bodies and the integrity of our air, land, and water.”
An Environmental Club favorite is the Campus Landfill event on Thursday, April 22. “We want students to see their own garbage, and DePauw allows us to taint the beauty of the campus in the academic quad for four hours,” Ramage says. “We start with bags of trash collected from different places on campus and sort through it all piece by piece. We take out all that’s recyclable and compostable. We also take out things that don’t need to be thrown away. Last year, I found a functioning calculator.”
“Campus Landfill is great research tool to see how our recycling program is working,” Ramage says. “We found a lot a food being thrown away at the café because there aren’t compostable bins there. So, we see where changes need to be made and learn how much garbage is really garbage. Last year, we went through 40 bags.”
The Campus Landfill is open to all from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the academic quad.
DePauw Nature Park clean-ups take place on April 19, 20, and 21 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. “We meet at the Welcome Center to pick up trash, pull invasive weeds, and clean up around the Big Walnut Creek,” Ramage says. “Last year we pulled out 17 tires. It’s so hard to get people in the middle of the day to the Nature Park, but our hope is to get a few people a day because it does have an impact.”
The Good Eats Cookout (2009 photo at left) is a great celebration of local foods on April 22 from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. outside of the Union Building Hub.
“Steve Santo and Dining Services really play an important role in this event. Steve deserves a lot of credit,” Ramage says.
The Environmental Club gives Santo, general manager of dining services, and Dining Services $400 to find and purchase organic, locally grown food. “We show up and enjoy it,” Ramage says.
“The Good Eats cookout is the best way to get people to an Earth Week event. People don’t even need to know it’s happening because they just walk right into it,” Ramage says. “It’s a chance to eat free, locally grown food, and an easy and fun way for people to think about the environment.”
There will be live music and a drum circle during the cookout.
Finally, Ramage says to look for the bottled water mountain on campus this week. “We learned that Dining Services sells 1,900 bottles of water each week. We’re collecting these bottles through recycling collection. The mountain will be another visual like the campus landfill. When you actually see it, it may have more of an impact and get us thinking about the role we’re playing in the environment.”
Check the online campus calendar for a full listing of DePauw’s Earth Week events.