Student Life

Green Life’s Waste Sort

“Part of Green Life is coming up with ideas of how we can make the campus a more sustainable place to be,” Amy Blair, co-adviser of Green Life said. 

This past Earth Day was the perfect opportunity to execute one of those ideas, as SAU’s Green Life club was able to host their “Waste Sort” event. 

“The main idea behind this Waste Sort is to bring attention to what we are throwing away and what we can recycle instead of throwing away. We wanted it to be very visual, and right in the middle of campus so everyone could see it,” Green Life member Claire Duncan said.

They scheduled the event from 12 pm to 3 pm so it could be during the time most people would be outside on the campus. 

“We wanted to get a lot of data to see what we are recycling and what we could recycle more of and use that data to implement new policies. We could then use that to start educating people on what we need to do using events like this Waste Sort,” Duncan said. 

The green life members emphasized how important it was to be getting students involved. 

“We’ve had students from around campus involved in this. We’ve had an honors class that’s helped shop campus to raise awareness of Earth Day in general. We’ve had business students who helped promote the event, they developed the flyers and created games to play to attract students and we have green life students across campus who right now are sorting waste into the various categories,” Blair said. 

The event consisted of activities and games to get students involved with the green life team and to help learn about recycling and the different ways to help protect the environment. 

“We decided to create a game as a way to get people attracted,” Green Life member Isaac Meenan said on one of the ways they tried to get students involved. 

It was a 3 can toss game, and winners of the game could enter their name in raffles to win prizes such as gift cards, buzz bucks, and free items. Before students play the game, Green Life would encourage them to take the sustainability pledge. They were able to get over 200 people to sign the pledge.

“I think we had a really successful day, and it’s good to see many people care about the environment,” Meenan stated. 

Green Life hopes to get more students involved and interested in the club, especially those who are interested in protecting the environment and what needs to be done to do so.  

Find more coverage from this year’s Earth Day event here.

Share: