USC prepares to kick off Green Week

USC’s second annual Green Week is just around the corner, and the Office of Sustainability is looking to expand on last year’s sustainability efforts and awareness through seminars, on-campus activities, student organization initiatives and the unveiling of new sustainability projects. 

This year’s carousel of activities will kick off with the Arizona State-USC zero waste football game this coming Saturday. Both students and general attendees can expect extra pre-game festivities in and around the Coliseum, large commemorative banners strewn around campus celebrating the University’s sustainability achievements and goals and a halftime video address from University President Carol Folt.  

Ellen Dux, associate director of the Office of Sustainability, said the office is proud of the work surrounding the zero waste game and other major events held at the Coliseum.

“Football games at the Coliseum, and really at this point, any events over 10,000 attendees, are run as zero waste events,” Dux said. “[This] means we’re routinely diverting above 90% of waste from landfill to either compost or recycling.”

Mick Dalrymple, USC’s chief sustainability officer said he’s excited about the progress his team has made.

“I’m excited that Green Week is coming up again and how people are rallying around, doing and bringing stuff to the table,” Dalrymple said. “It really shows how sustainability is getting woven into all the different corners of campus.”

Dalrymple made several new announcements in a communitywide email Thursday afternoon, including a new postdoctoral fellowship program. The new venture hopes to “accelerate sustainability research, train future leaders and support discovery and implementation of innovative solutions to sustainability problems.”.

The office also announced the USC sustainability hub, which provides community members with live, sustainability-related data regarding energy usage, building expenditures, campus greenery and transportation. The site also provides information on sustainable resources around campus, including water bottle refill stations, LEED-powered buildings and multi-stream waste bins. 

USC Research has moved into stage three of the Urban Trees initiative. A joint partnership between the City of Los Angeles and USC, the program aims to guide the growth of greenery throughout South L.A. Researchers have now begun to identify places in both East and South L.A. where trees can both provide cooling and improve air quality and health. 

A variety of on-campus clubs will also host events throughout the week. The Arts and Climate Collective will host “Regenerate,” an art festival intended to inspire and support climate justice within the local community at the USC Fisher Museum on Oct. 3 in collaboration with Visions and Voices and the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. The event will showcase a myriad of ACC student projects, screen climate justice films and host a sustainable art workshop. Environmental justice activist and Anagnos Culture of Liberation award winner Nalleli Cobo, Director of Community Engagement at the USC Keck School of Medicine Jill Johnston and USC Professor of design China Adams are slated to speak at the event. 

While the ACC is yet to finalize which projects it will have on display, the focus will be multidisciplinary.

“We hope to show films, we hope to show visual art, we hope to show fashion,” said Natasha Nutkiewicz, an ACC grantee, intern and senior majoring in theater.  

Founded under the President’s Working Group on Sustainability, the ACC hopes to leverage University resources through funded student projects to raise awareness of the climate crisis. 

“We want to empower students to use all their tools and all their unique visions to fight this climate emergency,” Nutkiewicz said. 

Both the USC Peace Garden and USC Garden Club will host open gardening hours for students interested in getting their hands dirty. The Peace Garden will focus on adding native greenery to their plot outside the Shrine on Wednesday, while the gardening club will resume standard operations during their Friday timeslot. 

USC’s Students for Environmental Action, a student-led organization advocating for environmental sustainability and advocacy, plans to host several events throughout the week in a similar fashion to last year, including a forest clean-up and local tree planting exercise. 

“We prioritize taking action by not only incentivizing individual action but also coordinating giant group efforts,” said Cory DeWitt, a sophomore studying computer science and the Environmental Student Assembly’s co-president. 

While DeWitt is looking forward to the plethora of events, it’s the conversations they inspire that make the effort worthwhile. 

“As long as you’re talking about these issues, that’s the most important thing,” DeWitt said. 

Clover, another student organization aimed at promoting veganism, environmentalism and “reducetarianism,” will hold its annual vegan mac and cheese bake-off to further encourage vegan exploration.

“We talk a little bit about sustainability relating to veganism and stuff like that, but in a fun way that’s a little bit more approachable,” said Dominic Borrelli, co-president of Clover. “We might sneak a couple of other events in there as well.”

While Borrelli said he is content with USC’s immediate efforts toward going green, he also called for more accountability from the USC Board of Trustees.

“Our Board of Trustees primarily works in industries that are at odds with environmental progress,” Borelli said. “Most of them work for major corporations, even some of them are oil and gas companies … I think we need to overhaul our Board of Trustees.”