Summer is just over the hill — not the picturesque, grassy knoll sort of hill, but the kind made up of huge heaps of tests, last-minute projects, sleepless nights and, at the top, finals — and with summer comes travel, and lots of it. With escalating gas prices and commercials advertising hybrid and higher fuel-efficiency cars, the University’s Earth Day celebration today has a timely theme — “Fuel your life, not your car.”
“This year’s focus on sustainable transportation challenges students and our campus community not to simply accept the need for future change, but to lead the way and reap the attending benefits of truly progressive thinking,” Ryan Powell, the Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling’s outreach coordinator and a member of the Earth Day Planning Committee, said.
Earth Day, a celebration that began in 1970, is simultaneously observed in 174 countries, according to the Earth Day Network — the original founders of Earth Day.
Powell said the event moved to the Brickyard only six years ago — previous Earth Day celebrations took place on Harris Field.
When Earth Day, April 22, falls on a weekend, the University celebrates on a weekday so more students and faculty are on campus to experience it.
“With the move to the Brickyard…came a new focus on celebrating what everyone on campus does for our community environment,” Powell said.
According to Powell, the Brickyard event grew to become one of the largest in the Triangle, and predicts by next year, it will become North Carolina’s largest Earth Day celebration.
Today in the Brickyard more than 60 tables will provide information and demonstrations about environmental awareness, alternative energy and fuels, ways to reduce one’s carbon footprint and will even have games with a twist, such as the Environmental Price is Right.
There will be more vendors this year than ever before, due largely to the heightened public interest in environmental issues that the 2008 elections have brought to light, Powell said.
“I hope that the vendors help to elevate students beyond the typical cliches about environmental awareness,” Powell said.
N.C. Green Power, the Department of Transportation, the Solar Center, the Office of Energy Management, Whole Foods and the Forestry Club are a few of the organizations that will have informational tables and displays. The government is also working toward these sustainable energy goals. Multiple energy bills are passing through Congress, including the North Carolina Green Act and the Renewable Energy Standard, which aims to promote the creation of renewable energy resources such as solar and geothermal energy.
Powell said he wanted students to grasp environmental sustainability as an opportunity because their future jobs will depend greatly on their ability to achieve the same goals with a smaller impact on the environment and its well-being.
“The message students should take away from the event is that N.C. State is sitting on top of huge opportunities to lead the way in environmentally sustainable innovation,” Powell said.
The Solar Center
Lyra Rakusin, the North Carolina Solar Center’s outreach and training manager, said the Solar Center will have a table featuring fact sheets and exhibits about solar energy and alternative fuels. Also, the Center will bring demonstrations such as an electric vehicle and a solar oven.
“We’re planning on baking cookies if it’s sunny. Although, last year they melted, so hopefully the conditions will be better this year,” Rakusin said.
Maria O’Farrell, one of the Solar Center’s renewable energy research assistants, and Ruchi Singhal, the Solar Center’s transportation program coordinator, will operate the table, oven and vehicle and will be able to answer questions about the displays.
The Office of Energy Management
The Office of Energy Management will feature a leaky faucet display to record and demonstrate how much water is wasted every minute, and relate that to the amount of water wasted by leaky faucets both locally and state-wide.
In addition to the faucets, they will bring a light display comparing the efficiency of traditional incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.
The bulbs, though more expensive, will end up saving money on one’s energy bill, according to Gabrielle Flanary, a freshman in aerospace engineering who works at the office.
“There’s an incentive for students here to really be environmentally conscious. The most important aspect of the event is student awareness,” Flanary said.
Flanary said, if conditions permit, she hopes the table will also feature an energy bike that will demonstrate the cyclist’s manpower by measuring the energy he or she expends.
Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling
In addition to purely informational tables and demonstrations, students who work at the Waste Reduction and Recycling program, Paul Fullmore, a sophomore in communications, and Nathan Maher, a sophomore in mechanical engineering, will set up a table of environmentally centered games and crafts designed to increase awareness about the importance of reducing one’s impact on the Earth.
Two such games, the Recycling Sorting Game and the Can Toss, require on-the-toes action and accuracy when it comes to knowledge about recycling. According to Maher, while the Sorting Game pits a player and a friend against one another in a race to see who can sort clean, recycled and oftentimes items that are difficult to place the fastest, while the Can Toss is the recyclable equivalent to basketball.
“While the first priority with these games is to promote recycling awareness, the second is to give away all of our awesome prizes,” Maher said.
Some of these prizes include stickers, recycled wood pencils, temporary tattoos, bottle openers and seed packets, according to Maher.
The table will also feature, according to Maher, a crafts area where participants can make notebooks from recycled paper and cardboard and at the next area create flying rings from recycled paper. Chalk will also be available for those who want to use the bricks as their own canvas.
“[The chalk art] has been big in past Earth Days, but lately has been lackluster, so I hope to get a lot of student involvement to help bring the Brickyard to life,” Maher said.
Though this table may seem like all fun and games, the real mission, according to Fullmore, is much more profound.
“In the end, we hope that we persuade people to think carefully before they dispose items, because it can have a negative effect on the world,” Fullmore said.
