As Mississippi State students gathered on the Drill Field, the concentration of green shades become noticably denser with people wearing the color to promote awareness about recycling and going green for Wednesday’s Green Day event.
Green Day concluded with speakers lecturing in McCool Wednesday night.
The College of Architecture, Art and Design, Student Association, MSU Recycling Club, Mac User Group and Triangle Management sponsored the event.
Director of MSU Environmental Collaborative Office Jeremiah Dumas spoke for the event and said he hopes one day the university’s green efforts will stand out.
“Our greatest benefit will be to put this campus into the type of teaching tool that it should be and not the type of corporate office park that it is,” Dumas said. “Hopefully in years to come, we’ll really see the change and the patterns shift.”
Nisreen Cain, president of Green Starkville, spoke about the importance of recycling and waste minimization for the event.
“Instead of buying 10 bottles of water, you would buy one and reuse it everyday,” she said. “We are trying to focus on waste minimization to begin with and recycling as a complementary activity to waste minimization.”
Cain said the first thing people can do is change their behavior with recyclable items.
“Reduce, reuse and then recycle,” Cain said. “Waste minimization comes first.”
Cain said students need to know the benefits of waste minimization and recycling.
“Everything starts with you [students] because you have to make the difference and you have to make the changes,” she said.
Architecture professor Michael Berk spoke of the future of the world and the roles everyone has to play in it.
In his lecture, Berk said, “With any decisions we make now, we have to consider the next 140 years. Ultimately, we all have an environmental footprint.”
He said everyone should conserve energy and use the natural resources available.
“During the daytime, we should not be turning on any electric lighting,” Berk said. “That is really wasteful.”
Senior architecture major Elizabeth Allen aided in the event’s production and said she thought it was a success.
“I think the daytime event definitely had a lot of response – a lot of people were open to wearing stickers, getting flyers and talking to us about how to recycle,” Allen said. “Also, a lot of people brought their recyclables.”
Allen said the turnout for the evening was low, but the speakers were successful in incorporating their fields of study with Green Day’s objectives of promoting recycling and green efforts.
“There was not as large of a crowd as we expected, but you have to start somewhere,” she said. “I think the speakers were really great, they hit the high points of the things we need to work on.”
Sophomore landscape architecture major Taylor Duncan said she was not impressed with the turnout.
“I think it could have been more successful … but it is good to see there are people that do care,” Duncan said. “I just think people should have helped more to get the word out.”
She said she thinks green efforts on campus are dependent on student involvement.
“Faculty can only go so far – I think the foundation is in the students,” Duncan said. “We need more people to care.”
Allen said she expects Green Day to be a recurring event.
“Hopefully Green Day will become an annual event,” she said.