Earth Week is a chance to learn and have fun

Earth Week was fun when I was in elementary school. Each year, my class would bake cookies in solar-powered ovens or trek to some local park, where teachers would cheer on either Team Stratosphere or Team Thermosphere as they raced to collect the most trash.

I recall testing the pH of nearby rivers and, after a laborious afternoon of taking samples, concluding they were, in fact, gross, though most of us had arrived at the same conclusion three hours earlier when the first bucket of water drawn up included a tire iron and a pair of pants.

We enjoyed these activities when we were kids. Whereas these days we step over spilled trash and neglect the recycling bin because it’s on the other side of the room, we once tackled each other to the ground over who got to pick up a discarded Pepsi can.

It probably helped that whoever won was promised an otter pop. Luckily for USC students, this year’s Earth Week is packed with events and activities to make the week as exciting as it once was.

Earth Week is as good a time as any to get into the lighter side of environmentalism, and there’s also no better time to actually get educated on all things green.

Campus organizations this year have stepped up their game to provide a surprising number of events, both educational and entertaining, aimed at pretty much every student demographic.

The information about sustainability, climate change and even basic things like recycling doesn’t get much more accessible than it will be this week — let’s be sure to take advantage of it.

If you picked up this paper in front of Leavey Library, you’re probably also standing next to a new Chevrolet Volt, which CalPIRG arranged to have brought to campus today as part of the Green Tech Fair, a combined effort by various campus organizations to showcase the latest in green technology.

“It’s important for people to see that going green is more than just cutting back on things,” said Koushaw Ghaffarian, a sophomore majoring in economics/mathematics and political science who helped coordinate the display. “[Environmental] education can also be about more fun stuff like this.”

The “fun stuff” even extends to Westwood. Friday (Earth Day) will mark the culmination of Unite For Green, a semester-long contest between USC and UCLA that kicked off in November at the USC-UCLA football game. The competition tracks which school has the highest attendance at various green events throughout the semester (USC is ahead as of press time). The winning school gets a solar-powered concert on its campus next semester, which should provide at least as much incentive as an otter pop to go get your green on.

Unite For Green has also coordinated an event with ROTC on Friday night in case you want to find out how many pushups it takes to power a lightbulb.

Meanwhile, Net Impact is hosting a waste program on The Row, a panel to discuss issues of sustainability and a fashion show.

Casey Quon, a senior majoring in environmental studies and one of the students leading Greening the Greeks, the CalPIRG competition to see which house can reduce its carbon footprint the most, said many students seem to be regaining their enthusiasm for events like these.

Students will inevitably go to events like the fashion show and the Chevrolet display more for entertainment than for education. But it would be a waste to merely glance over these efforts and not come away with anything.

Stay a few minutes longer at the Green Tech displays and find out the benefits of owning a hybrid car. Ask about the logistics of bringing solar power to campus.

At the very least, grab an otter pop and browse the booths on Trousdale.

Just remember to recycle the wrapper.

 

Kastalia Medrano is a sophomore majoring in print and digital journalism and an associate managing editor for the Daily Trojan. Her column, “Green Piece,” runs Tuesdays.