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The Daily Wildcat

The Daily Wildcat

 

Sustainability as community

Students will build castles out of cardboard at the Great Green Event on Tuesday.

The event is sponsored by Students for Sustainability as a way to showcase the UA’s green culture on campus.

Other groups joining Students for Sustainability are Solar Cats, the Office of Sustainability and the Honors Student Council’s sustainability committee.

The groups will be on the UA Mall from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. hosting games and talking to students.

One of the games will be Cardboard Castles, in which students will build forts out of cardboard to show some of the everyday items, like cardboard, that end up in landfills when they could have been recycled.

“”I think that a lot of students want to become green and they just don’t know there is an outlet to do so on campus, so that’s kind of what this event is all about,”” said Leslie Marasco, Students for Sustainability’s education and outreach and Earth Day team lead and environmental science senior.

Christopher Stern, Students for Sustainability director and international studies sophomore, is hoping to show students a side of going green they don’t usually see.

“”(Sustainability is) definitely something that is very salient at the moment,”” Stern said. “”It’s on everyone’s mind. People want to talk about it, but so much that is presented, especially the demographic students fall into … is about problems. It’s not about action or what you can do, and if it is about what you can do, it’s about one-time actions or personal habits. It’s not about a community or engaging in a movement.

“”What we’re looking to do is make students aware that there is a culture and a community for sustainability at the U of A, because there really is, and there’s a very strong one.””

Students for Sustainability is also looking to recruit interns for next semester at the event. Stern encourages students of all majors to apply, noting that the needs of their projects go beyond the obvious soil and biological sciences.

Stern said he is excited about the idea of showing students ways they can be active on a community level, and that it should be fun and not something students should have to worry over or feel guilty about.

“”I think that students are looking for information about how to get involved with sustainability to actually do something rather than just turn the light switch off — to actually have some sort of engagement that they can do on a regular basis and with friends,”” Stern said.

 

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