Photo by Sean Quinn
Seton Hall University students join hands April 22 at the start of ECO-Fest, a celebration of the planet and an encouragement to conserve nature’s resources.
SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — Seton Hall University’s Ecology Club and Student Government Association celebrated Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22, by hosting ECO-Fest on the Campus Green to raise awareness about environmental issues in an entertaining way.
Throughout the day, ECO-Fest gave students the chance to participate in fun activities, such as environmental trivia contests with merchandise donated by Coca-Cola for prizes, and lessons on how to make body scrubs from natural ingredients or make pine cone bird feeders. Additionally, green-minded passersby could add a plastic water bottle to the SHUcycle tree to illustrate the prevalence of disposable bottles and the necessity of recycling. And, food trucks were present on campus to get students to the Green and make them aware of the Earth Day festivities.
Though this was actually the second ECO-Fest, Carolina Gomez-Bello, the Ecology Club co-president, said this year’s event was much grander in scale than the first to better show people the importance of protecting the environment. After all, Gomez-Bello pointed out, those who do not care for the Earth are only hurting themselves.
“It is a cause that affects everyone,” Gomez-Bello told the News-Record during the event. “It is really important to take care of the Earth because there is only one planet. And there is just so much evidence that things are not going well, that if we do not act now we are going to have to face dire consequences.”
For that reason, Gomez-Bello said that she and her co-president, Andriana Fragola, have made a concerted effort since taking over the Ecology Club to expand its programming and make it more visible on campus. In addition to screening several environmental documentaries and holding fundraisers for endangered species, she said the organization started the SHUcycle campaign in which students were encouraged to post photos of themselves recycling on Instagram and Twitter to receive a free reusable water bottle at ECO-Fest. Plus, the group took part in the People’s Climate March in New York City this past September just before President Barack Obama addressed climate change to the United Nations.
And their efforts are making a difference, especially when it comes to recycling, according to Fragola. Before starting the SHUcycle initiative, she said that a longstanding myth existed on campus that Seton Hall actually did not recycle, leading most students to throw everything into the garbage. But after starting the campaign, which included posting facts about recycling around the university, she said more people are taking an interest. Though the club does not yet know the tonnage recycled since SHUcycle began, Fragola said she sees more students recycling now than ever before.
That is good news for environmentalists, who advocate that recycling is a simple, albeit underutilized, way to save the planet’s resources. According to Environmental Protection Agency statistics, the average person generates more than 4 pounds of trash daily, and Americans make more than 200 million tons yearly. GreenWaste statistics say more than 75 percent of waste is recyclable, yet only 30 percent is actually reused.
More people recycling means more of the Earth’s resources are restored. According to SustainAbility, if Americans recycled one-tenth of their newspapers, 25 million trees could be saved annually; and recycling 100 cans could also light a room for two weeks.
But recycling is not the only way to help the environment, which is a message the Ecology Club is now stressing to students.
“Even if (students) are not in the club, they can understand that there are opportunities to be green on campus that are easy for them to do, and they are cheap, too,” Fragola told the News-Record at the event. “They are something that you can really incorporate into your lifestyle. And building that lifestyle now is really important for students as they continue getting older and become adults.”
Some simple measures to preserve natural resources that Fragola listed include: turning off the faucet when shaving or brushing teeth, reading e-books instead of hard copies and avoiding plastic products whenever possible.
It is not only the Ecology Club that has spurred on the recent green movement around campus, however. The Student Government Association’s recycling committee — which includes SGA senators, Ecology Club members and SHU staff — has been integral in raising environmental awareness on campus, sponsoring ECO-Fest and SHUcycle with the club. SGA Senator Alex Krause, who is an Ecology Club member, made greening the university his platform during his election and said the ultimate goal is to see the entire student body take a leadership role in protecting the Earth.
“There is nothing without the Earth,” Krause told the News-Record while setting up for ECO-Fest. “Let’s all work together in coalition to preserve something that every person in this world needs and every person in this world is affected by. And young people especially — you see young people in social movements more often than you see older people with families. So young people are really going to have to spearhead this movement like they have spearheaded most movements in the past.”
Elisa Kupelian exemplifies the effect the Ecology Club and SGA’s push toward environmentalism has had around campus. Kupelian, a public relations student who was assigned to work with the club as an independent study, told the News-Record that she has appreciated working with the organization because it has taught her so much about protecting the world around her. She said she now has a deeper respect for conservation that she might not have had otherwise.
“I cared about the Earth and I recycled, but I never really thought about it,” Kupelian said in an April 21 phone interview. “I never really thought about how we can benefit from the Earth and it can benefit from us if we treat it right. So I think it has been an eye-opening semester.”
Kupelian is not the only student whose eyes have been opened. Wanda Knapik, an environmental studies professor, said she has seen a recent increased interest in the environmental studies program and the resources that the university offers as part of it. For instance, Knapik said many students are just realizing now that Seton Hall has a greenhouse and campus garden. While the greenhouse is designated for students enrolled in certain environmental studies classes — which teach them how to plant and cultivate things including tomatoes, basil, flowers, cucumbers, herbs and lettuce — the garden is open to anyone to plant and eat from. It even offers a sitting area so students can study or congregate in a peaceful environment.
Seeing a groundswell of support for the green movement on campus means a lot to Knapik. The professor, who is also an adviser to the Ecology Club, said the planet needs people’s help now more than ever before. And as an educator, she said she is especially proud to see her students are the ones leading the charge for a more environmentally healthy future.
“It is so rewarding because you feel like they are making a difference,” Knapik told the News-Record en route to the campus garden. “That is what you want to do — you want to inspire them to make a difference. You want to inspire them to take small steps that make big changes.”
SHU students have demonstrated themselves capable of doing so through ECO-Fest, but Gomez-Bello pointed out that making the world greener is not just a campus issue. She urged South Orange and Maplewood residents to think about preserving the environment in their own lives; otherwise, the planet and everyone in it will suffer as a result.
“People should do everything they can at home and in their own community to help the environment,” Gomez-Bello said. “Earth Day is not just one day of the year.
It is something that you have to live every single day.”