Sustainability Council introduces free store, concert
Sustainability efforts on campus this year include a free concert, bicycle repair stations and a store where everything is free, according to Student Sustainability Office intern Blake Thomas.
“I think it’s exciting to have students on campus using their minds and putting their efforts, their energy, to create a more sustainable campus,” Thomas said. It’s moving forward with new technology and innovation.”
With projects now being implemented by the Blue Goes Green fee, the Sustainability Office is working on being more involved with students to show how their money is used in projects to better the campus, said Sustainability director Sean Damitz.
Students voted in favor of the Blue Goes Green fee two years ago and received some criticism in the election. Thomas said in order to address concerns about the fee, the Sustainability Office sent a survey to students last year and is now using the data as a guide in their office.
Now that we’ve got a year under our belt and I think we’ve got a more solidified mission, we can kind of interface with more students to be more visual, Damitz said.
As part of the effort to show off the sustainability projects, Thomas is organizing a kickoff concert Oct. 5 in the TSC International Lounge. Booths will be set up for each of the projects funded by sustainability grants to explain to students how their money was spent this last year, he said.
The concert starts at 7 p.m. and the bands Desert Noises, Good Blood and Children of the North will play, Thomas said. The first is from Orem and the latter two are from Logan, he said.
The concert itself is funded entirely by money made from the student move-out sale last spring, Thomas said.
“The end of last school year, Students for Sustainability and the Sustainability Office put out bins in all the dorms and for the last week of school. Anyone moving out could put stuff in that they were going to throw away,” Thomas said.
Once the sustainability staff sorted through the large amount of items, they sold it at the Cache Valley Gardeners Market, Thomas said. However, there was still a large amount of items leftover.
The abundance of move-out sale leftovers led to the creation of a store where students can sort through the piles of clothing, kitchen items, school supplies and storage containers and take things home for free, according to Crista Sorenson, student director of Students for Sustainability. The free store is currently housed at Youth Discovery, Inc. at 60 W 1000 North behind Walgreens, she said.
“There quite literally a mountain,” Sorenson said.
However, because the storage space is borrowed, the leftover items will not be around for long, she said.
“After homecoming it’s all being donated,” Sorenson said.
Sorenson said she hopes to continue the free store, but the Sustainability Council needs to find space on campus for it.
“That would be a great idea for a Blue Goes Green grant if anyone is interested in it,” she said.
Sustainability efforts on campus often crossover with different aspects of the Sustainability Office, which presides over the Utah Conservation Corp, Aggie Blue Bikes, and the Sustainability grant program, Damitz said. One visible example is the bicycle repair stations outside the library and Aggie Blue Bikes, he said. The bicycle repair stations and the water bottle refill stations around campus were the first two grant projects awarded money last fall, Damitz said. This spring the Sustainability Council approved five more projects with the $29,000 collected from the Blue Goes Green fee and matching donations from other sources on and off campus, he said.
Damitz said he was astounded at the quality of grant applications submitted last year for sustainability initiatives on campus. The Student Sustainability council approved grants for five new green projects this spring, all submitted by USU students.
Damitz, who said he writes grants for a living, said he was surprised and happy to give funding to those projects.
“Frankly, the first year as an administrator, and having kind of sat through that debate, I was blown away by the quality of applications and dedication,” he said.
Among the five grant awardees this spring were the USU Powder Wagon, the Logan sewage lagoons and the Student Organic Farm.
Thomas, who works in the office where grant applications are considered, said the Sustainability grant is not just for engineering students.
“Really, where I’d like to see it go is see a really diverse range of students requesting or proposing for grants,” Thomas said. “So we’d have business students with ideas and art students, and natural resource students and engineers.”
-la.stewart@aggiemail.usu.edu