Wherever you go on campus, there are a multitude of trash bins, all separated into categories in order to be more friendly to the environment. As USC continues to celebrate Earth Day, we looked at how sustainable Trojans really are.
Freshman Joy Wang has a few ways she is able to practice sustainability.
Fellow freshman Egan Waklole chooses to change her diet in order to be more in tune with the earth.
Other students, Like Sandy Cull feel that we still have more to accomplish.
The SC Garden Club is composed of a group of students, all with one goal: to maintain the Parkside garden. Oddly enough, this club is the only student-run green space on campus. While gardening takes up a huge portion of the club, there also host events, and the garden itself is always open for compostable drop-offs. A good rule of thumb is you can compost anything that was once living or is alive!
Andrew Bawiec is an environmental studies student and the current Vice President of the SC Garden Club. They shared that the community welcomed them with open arms when they joined as a freshmen, and with the club, they have gained a better relationship with the Earth.
Andrew Bawiec: My time in Garden Club has really helped me connect with nature more, which is something that is greatly lacking in a lot of modern society. People view nature either as a commodity, or as something foreign that they get to visit but having a garden space where you are tending to the plants and you’re attending to the creatures here really helps you form that relationship between yourself and your place in nature.
The President of the SC Garden Club is Esther Jeon, she shares how it is important it is to think about the environment. Even though we are living in a city.
Esther Jeon: Earth Day is, a great thing to celebrate. Recognizing that we do need to care about our Earth and, even when we live in the city, there’s greenery that we do need to care about and that we rely on even if we don’t see it as much and I think that the garden is a great place to just explore that in our campus.
Ellen Dux the Associate director of the Office of sustainability discussed how USC has nearly doubled their reduction of green house gases on campus over the last few years.
Ellen Dux: We just finished our greenhouse gas assessment for this past year and we are now coming in at around 45 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and that’s all from a baseline of 2014. So, significant change, significant ramp up. What you’re seeing is not just that we’re going directionally in the right way, but we’re getting there faster.
If there is any day to be kinder to our Earth, take advantage today! Don’t forget to water your plants, and separate your trash correctly!
For Annenberg Media, I’m Malcolm Caminero.