Environmental Club spotlight
The Environmental Club kicks off the new year, eager to share sustainable practices.
By Isabelle Abraham
As the semester picks up, student clubs begin preparing for the upcoming year. Meetings and events get scheduled, posters get pinned up and pizza gets ordered.
The Environmental Club, in particular, has been gearing up for a fun-filled year.
“I want to recruit younger students and I want to get people excited about it,” Ava Hart, President of the Environmental Club, said. “There’s so much negativity towards climate change and global warming. You go online, you look it up, it’s just negative. As true as all of that is and how much you need to understand all of that, the better side is getting people excited to fix it. Getting new students, younger students, excited about learning about sustainability and how to fix the bigger problems on a single-person scale.”
In the past, the club has held trash cleanups at beaches and communities, planted seedlings for Delta’s community garden and participated in events like the Earth Action Expo to see how students can contribute to solving the climate change crisis.
Last year, the Environmental Club hosted a beach cleanup at the Bay City State Park.
“We picked up 101 pounds of trash through the wind and rain,” Hart said. “It was awesome.”
On a smaller scale, the Environmental Club meets on the second Tuesday of every month at 6:00 p.m. The meetings are held in room C116 on Delta’s main campus.
During these meetings students and teachers have the opportunity to share their methods of increasing their own sustainability.
At last month’s meeting, Professor of Biology and Science & Mathematics, Abigail Van Vuren, taught the club how to make soap from leftover oil. By filtering out impurities created by using the oil, mixing in a lye-water solution and pouring it into a mold, wasted oil can be repurposed into soap.
The Environmental Club allows for many similar opportunities. According to Hart, the Environmental Club hopes to hold an event where they can teach the community how to mend clothing and make tote bags out of t-shirts. These skills can be a great way to repair and repurpose articles of clothing instead of getting rid of them.
The Environmental Club is great for students looking for a community that values sustainability, or who are looking to make a difference. Be sure to attend their next meeting on Oct. 16 or catch them tabling during Earth Science Week on Oct. 14.