During the week of April 3rd through the 7th, Environment Catawba Outreach (ECO) hosted events each day of the week to celebrate Earth Week. These events were used to educate students about the environment and create their own environmentally friendly items.
The week started off with students having the opportunity to create their own self-watering planters, using recycled water bottles in the Stanback Plaza to help educate about plastic pollution. On Tuesday, the movie Avatar was shown in the CENV for all students to teach and encourage discussion about deforestation and the importance of biodiversity. Later in the week, students decorated their own reusable bags to replace the plastic shopping bags they receive in stores.
On Thursday night, students gathered in the student center during the midst of a power outage to participate in Green Trivia for the chance to win prizes such as an ENO hammock, a backpack, or a Yeti water bottle. To end the week, both American Chemical Society (ACS) and ECO co-hosted Star Night, where students enjoyed s’mores while watching the stars in Catawba’s observatory in the Shuford Science Building.
Julieanna Herriven, the president of ECO said “[I] wanted to put on this event because I realized the division on campus when it came to the environment. There are students who don’t know much about the impacts we have on the earth and another group who knows a lot.
I wanted those two groups to come together and bring awareness about issues in the environment and how we as college students can help even if it is doing something small as re-purposing a single water bottle.”
Photos from the Earth Week events can be viewed below:
