Earth week raises awareness, supports local food
By William Duffee
Students are digging deeper into their awareness about environmental issues through Earth Week, a weeklong series of events surrounding Earth Day on April 22.
Earlham Environmental Action Coalition (EEAC) is sponsoring the celebrations that, according to sophomore EEAC member Clara Lippert, “promote sustainability and environmental awareness.”
The celebratory week began on Sunday with a bird walk, and has since included a screening of the film “Fresh,” a trip to the local farmers’ market, a senator call-in session and, in celebration of Earth Day yesterday, a party and open mic at the student-run coffee shop.
Earth Week continues through Sunday, with a “Critical Mass” bike ride today, Farm Day at Miller Farm tomorrow, and a 100-mile radius potluck at Miller Farm on Sunday.
The goal of the week is to “be more aware in general,” said Lippert. “There’s lots of things that we take for granted in our daily lives.”
In addition to general environmental awareness, EEAC organized the week with a particular emphasis on local foods.
“Buying local food is really good for creating local economies: oftentimes small farmers use much more sustainable methods … than large-scale, industrial agriculture,” said junior Carmen Black, co-convenor of EEAC. “Buying local is something that students can do when they’re purchasing their own foods … [It is] something that’s hard to do as a student, but can be done.” Former biology professor Bill Buskirk, who led the Sunday morning bird watch, appreciated the effort to focus on the earth.
“I have a lot of respect for the students who organize [the week] for the college,” he said. “I think it’s always an important thing for us to take that extra time and think about the Earth that we share with other organisms, as well as other people.”
Black said that Earth Week has not been a big event at Earlham inn recent years, but that EEAC hopes to change that.
“We’d like to keep expanding what we’re doing, and bring more people into it. Right now we’re a pretty small core group, but a lot of people attend our events,” she said. “Clearly, environmental awareness is important to Earlham students, but it’s sometimes hard to get people activated to do things.”
Black also mentioned that EEAC intentionally organized some of the events in cooperation with the student-run coffee shop because of its efforts to be environmentally sustainable.
“They’re aligned with the same kind of initiatives as we are,” she said.
Earlham’s Bike Co-op has also contributed by sponsoring the bike ride to the farmers’ market on Tuesday, as well as the Critical Mass bike ride today.
A “Critical Mass” is an organized bike ride that aims “to make a point about the use of bike traffic, in the way a lot of [car drivers] are angry about seeing a biker on the road, because there are more cars than bikers,” Black said. The Bike Co-op holds Critical Mass once a month, weather permitting.
Critical Mass begins today at the Bike Co-op at 4 p.m. and will include a barbeque grill afterward.
Farm Day at Miller Farm begins at 10 a.m. tomorrow — a shuttle will be available in front of the old security office. The 100-mile radius potluck at Miller Farm will be at 6 p.m. on Sunday.
Earth Day began in 1970 as a teach-in on environmental issues. Former U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson initiated the first Earth Day, around which the Earth Week Committee of Philadelphia organized the first Earth Week.
Earth Week typically begins on April 16 and culminates on April 22, but EEAC opted to observe the week as a calendar week in order to utilize two weekends.
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