COSAS promotes Earth Week, campus sustainability
Soft music filtered through speakers as students rolled up on bicycles, served themselves bacon and pancakes and sat with friends to chat and drink coffee together outside Aggie Blue Bikes.
Last Wednesday, the student sustainability club and Aggie Blue Bikes hosted the Bike to Breakfast event as part of Earth Week at Utah State University. Starting on April 8, USU celebrated Earth Week to recognize sustainable and eco-friendly living before Earth Day on April 22.
Environmental engineering major Ella Leonelli is the student sustainability engagement lead in the Christensen Office of Social Action and Sustainability, or COSAS, and planned Earth Week along with other leads in the office.
“We have a lot of really fun events planned, and we’re very excited to see how much we can make an impact on college students,” Leonelli said. “I have been tracking the number of people who are signing up to be involved with the Eco Hunt. It’s really fun to track who’s already registered for that, who’s aware of what’s going on.”
The Eco Hunt is an Earth Week initiative where students who attend events earn points for prizes. Points can also be earned from practicing sustainability during the week.
Leonelli plans events to educate students on sustainable practices and advocates for sustainability on campus. She is also the co-president of the student sustainability club alongside Kylee Chadwick.
“The overall goal of the club is to bring students together who are passionate about sustainability and to find a community of like-minded people,” Chadwick said. “Sustainability is all about systems, and that’s important because you hear a lot about the things going on with climate change and relevant issues in the world.”
First-year student Anna Hansen has participated in multiple student sustainability club events and was on the council to plan Earth Week.
Hansen said the council has been working on creating events that will encourage students to implement more sustainable practices in their lives. Bike to Breakfast is an event where students get free breakfast if they bike or walk to Aggie Blue Bikes and bring their own dishes.
“Being involved with the sustainability club has definitely enriched my student experience. There are a lot of interesting and helpful events that they put on,” she said. “I think it is a great opportunity to meet other people who also care deeply about the environment.”
In 2022, the Student Sustainability Office and the Christensen Service Center officially merged into one to become COSAS. Although the partnership is new, the two groups within have existed at the university for a number of years.
“There’s just so much collaboration that we thought we’d make the relationship official,” said Giselle Bandley, COSAS coordinator.
Val R. Christensen, the namesake of the office, was a prominent university administrator and a founder of USU’s first volunteer organization. He passed away in 2022.
Sustainability initiatives across all main and satellite campuses operate under Sustainability Policy 106, which states, “The university is committed to enhancing the quality of life for individuals and communities by promoting sustainability in its operations and academic and service missions.”
Bandley advises six student team leads in her role as coordinator.
Annie Watson leads the TrueBlue Reuse Thrift Store, a pop-up thrift shop that “encourages students to be mindful of consumerism and textile waste.” Watson also repairs clothing for students to give items longer life.
“We should take care of the things that we have already,” Chadwick said.
There will be a donation drive coming up at the end of this semester that will collect clothing for next year’s incoming students to shop for free in the fall.
Heather Burr leads Aggies Building Community, a service team within the department where students commit to meeting once a month to discuss different topics and serve with community partners in the area. Chadwick is the marketing lead and handles social media and advertisements.
Art and sociology major Kate Markman leads the USU Harvest Rescue, the gleaning initiative. Gleaning is the collection of leftover crops from fields after they have been commercially harvested.
Markman coordinates volunteer groups who go out into the community and harvest excess residential produce. The produce is taken and redistributed throughout the valley. This last season, Harvest Rescue gleaned nearly 15,000 pounds of excess produce.
The program runs from July to the end of October. Main community partners include SNAC and the Cache Community Food Pantry. The group has also worked with the Cache Senior Center, Loaves and Fishes and Families Feeding Families.
As the student sustainability engagement lead, another project Leonelli takes on every year is tailgate recycling. At every tailgate, the organization provides education about diverting direct waste.
“It’s a good educational moment for the fraternities and other groups recycling at these events to understand what is recyclable and what isn’t,” she said.
Volunteers bring bins to separate waste into recyclables and non-recyclables. Everything that is collected is weighed. Last tailgating season, of the 199 total pounds put in recycling bins, 95.5 pounds were actually trash, and 103.5 pounds was recyclable.
“It’s really cool to see what people think is recyclable versus not and then see the data hold up to that,” Leonelli said. “The national average, last time I checked, was like 51% of things put in recycling bins are actually recyclable, and we’re right on the money for that.”
She also planned the February Food Festival, which served vegan food and demonstrated how to meet dietary needs without eating meat on a daily basis or with every meal.
Leonelli also works for Aggie Blue Bikes. The shop advocates for alternatives to cars, including using public transport, riding bikes, walking, roller-skating and riding a scooter.
“We take bicycles from community members that are donated to us, and then we either make them into Aggie Blue Bikes or we donate them back to the community,” she said. “A lot of people who don’t have the ability to work on these bikes would just throw them away, and we are able to get these bikes ready to go again and be given to someone else to have the opportunity to ride.”
Psychology major Jackson Olsen leads the community rakes and shovels initiative, which coordinates raking and shoveling for senior citizens and people with physical disabilities. There can be fines for driveways that have not been cleared, and Olsen helps to mitigate that problem.
“One thing that I’m trying to do is create a community where the college students and senior citizens or people with these disabilities can come together and work on volunteering projects or just find a way to connect, because they may not have that opportunity to do so at home,” Olsen said.
Computer science major Jake Anderson is the global issues and immigration lead. Anderson works closely with the refugee community in Logan and does whatever he feels is needed to support them. Currently, the group is running tutoring sessions for elementary to high school students every Wednesday at the Logan Library.
“That’s been really fun and a really great experience to just be a mentor,” he said. “You’re there to help these kids figure out what they want to do, give them some direction, and honestly just making connections with people in your community that come from different backgrounds is really an awesome opportunity.”
According to the assistant director of community-engaged learning, Nelda Ault-Dyslin, the funding for the COSAS leads’ positions and the supplies they need for their programs and projects comes from student activity fee money received from USUSA each year. Other funding sources include student participants and private donors.
At their monthly team lead meetings, Bandley and the leads update each other on their programs, any needs they might have and upcoming events.
“This office is really great about stepping in and then helping each other out with each project,” Markman said.
To track progress, the leads fill out monthly reports with different metrics to measure how many volunteers are attending their events and what progress is being made on specific projects.
Students can get involved with any of the groups by following the office on Instagram @usu_cosas and visiting their AggiePulse platform, where they can connect with service opportunities and track accomplishments.
“You can just show up, come to one event,” Anderson said. “Anything you hear about, just try it out. And if you click with it, and it’s everything you ever dreamed, then keep coming. We’d love to have you, and if it’s not, then go find something else that you’re passionate about or that you care about, and go get involved.”
Applications open every year for the team lead positions, and students can apply for those as they open.
“It feels very unified to have the leads of other people who want to do good together,” Olsen said. “I think that’s a very big motivational factor. Another thing is there’s needs that people have that we need to fulfill, and if there’s no people to go out to do it, then who’s going to do it?”
Leonelli was involved in the student sustainability club before she became a lead and had the opportunity to apply for a grant that supports the tailgate recycling project.
“I’ve been able to reach out to people that probably wouldn’t have cared about sustainability in any sense,” she said. “Just to find that common ground is really cool to see.”
“This is my second year of being a leader in the office,” Markman said. “In the first year, I chose to be a lead because I wanted more out of my experience here at Utah State, and I found where my passions intersect, in a way. I felt really passionate about sustainability and about community.”
Markman decided to enroll for another year at USU because of the way her life has been enriched by her involvement with COSAS.
“There hasn’t been anything that has enriched my experience as a student as much as being involved in this office and being involved in the gleaning program and the other sibling programs that exist under the COSAS office,” she said. “It’s helped me get out of my world of just being a student.”