Earth Day Emphasizes Importance of Sustainable Initiatives

Every year, a week in April is committed to celebrating the Earth, formally known as Earth Week. From April 16 to April 22, the purpose of Earth Week is to emphasize, inform and reflect the importance of environment and sustainability.

“It is important that students recognize Earth Week because for a really long time it has been ignored…Especially at Campo we have a lot of initiatives that we could be doing to promote a more sustainable campus… Earth Week is a great way to unify our campus,” said sustainability Leadership board member senior Mia Jiang.

In order to celebrate this week, Leadership’s Earth Committee set several activities for students to participate in including chalk activities, a clothing swap, alternative ride to school days, and garden work day.

On Tuesday and Thursday, the committee focused on different ways to ride to school with carpool and bike to school days- according to the US Environmental Protection Agency car transportation alone emits 4.6 metric tons of CO2 every year. Freshman Nicole Ruffalo who walks to school said, “Greenhouse gas emissions are a big problem and so is climate change. Alternative ways to enter school is one way to stop climate change and aid that problem.”

On Wednesday an earth-themed chalk day was set up in the quad for students to draw and create with others. Much of the drawings included flowers and animals, as well as many chalk drawn earth-related sentiments.

“A lot of people showed up [for chalk painting] which was really really cool and a lot of the amazing designs that we saw were a bunch of different stuff… some intricate detailed drawings… It was really great to see a lot of Campo people show up,” said Jiang.

For next year, the sustainability board has a lot of innovative ideas to keep Campo more sustainable; they are working hard along with Vice Principal Brent Rubey to bring more sustainable initiatives to campus.

“Rubey and the sustainability board next year have a lot of plans to bring sustainable initiatives onto campus like new bike racks,” Jiang said, “I know that one of the club members wanted to do a recycling plant that would take soda cans and plastic cans and you would get money in return for that… Hopefully we will bring more Campo sustainability for the future.”