NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts held a series of events this week to educate students on living sustainably. 

 

The goal of the events are to show students that healthy and sustainable living is possible and won't impede on their daily lives, said Lace Anderson, a student in the Green Living Seminar and one of the Earth Week events coordinators.

 

She added that people who buy products online are often not aware of the sustainable products that are accessible to them at local businesses just down the road.

 

"[Shopping at local businesses would] support the local community and single businesses and also improve your life, and make it healthier for you at the same time," Anderson said. 

 

The 13 events that the students organized taught the skills that they need to live sustainability and who to build a sustainable habit that they can take with them after college. They included upcycling old clothing, making your own laundry detergent, weaving plastic bags, canning and preserving food, seed saving and paper recycling. 

 

The initiative also brought the campus community together to learn and interact with nine local organizations and businesses including The Plant Connector, Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, Savvy Hive and the Hoosic River Watershed Association. 

 

"Events like this are really important because they draw a lot of people from outside the Environmental Studies Department," student and coordinator Andrew Ferrara said. 

 

"As I think with other departments, it can get kind of echo-chambery of us already knowing a lot of things about green living and being sustainable and environmental issues, but being able to connect with people outside our department, I think is really important and it draws people in and educates them about things that they can be doing."

 

The event is part the Green Living Seminar lecture series in which students not only learn about sustainability but also the skills on organizing and being part of a team. 

 

"It's also an opportunity for students to get some skills in terms of organizing," Environmental studies professor Elena Traister said. 

 

"We know that actually, a lot of employers, in addition to just sort of hard skills are really looking for students who have hands-on experience working as part of a team and so I think it's pretty great that it's not just an activity that brings the campus together to celebrate Earth Week, but also provides students with the opportunity to learn how to put on an event like this." 

 

Students who are taking the class attend lectures and work on a group project that's related to the seminar theme. And so one of the group projects this semester was working on organizing Earth Week.

 

The Earth Week celebration successfully returned last year after not happening for a number of years.  

 

The interesting thing about having initiatives like this on a college campus is that the impact is easier to measure due to the smaller community size, said student and coordinator Phil Anderson.

 

Last year, Ferrara started working on composting for the Flagg Townhouse Apartment Complex that has grown in popularity since last year. 

 

The hope is that eventually this initiative will also expand to include Berkshire Towers and Hoosac Hall.

 

There is more sustainable living happening on a college campus than in other parts of the world because there are a lot of people living in one place, Traister said. 

 

"The energy that it takes to sustain the lifestyle of college students living on campus is much lower per person than when you have a lot of people living spread out in a landscape kind of heating and lighting their own individual homes and driving around from place to place," she said. 

 

"So, this is always very interesting when we calculate our ecological footprints. So the ecological footprint of college students are lower than that of people who aren't living on a college campus." 

 

Although this is the case, the college has been very intentional about further reducing the environmental impact of the campus, Traister said. 

 

For example, a waste audit discovered that the single most abundant item in the trash on campus was disposable coffee cups. So the students partnered with dining services to sell reusable cups with a logo of their design for $4. Anyone who uses the mug when purchasing a coffee on campus gets 50 cents off their beverage. 

 

The cups were also given out free to students who actively participated in the Earth Week celebration.