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Earth Day At UA
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Posted April 21, 2008 at 1:37 PM
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On Wednesday, the University of Arizona was hit with a campus wide blackout which caused a ton of classes to be canceled. Having no electricity was a crisis to some, but for the school’s Earth Day Celebration and Campus Sustainability Fair it became a unique opportunity.
Though the outage had nothing to do with environmentalism, it did, by coincidence, reinforce the organizers’ message and gave students more free time to enjoy the event.
“The goal of today is for someone to come here and learn something new about what sustainability is, and how they can contribute,” fair organizer Liz Zavodsky said. “It’s not hard at all, and I think people will stop by and see how easy it is to eat locally, to shop locally, and to really make a difference. ”
Those who wanted to protect the planet pledged to lower their footprint and support campus sustainability initiatives.
“I will consider the environmental, social and economic impact of my daily decisions,” the oath said. “I will make an effort to reduce my ecological footprint, and I will share my efforts with others.”
Students can begin putting their oath into action by shopping at the farmer’s market and boycotting bottled water.
“About a quarter of the world’s populations lack access to clean potable water, and here in the U.S. we’re expected to spend $12 billion on bottled water, there is something inequitable about that,” said Kevin Burke, graduate assistant to UA’s Campus Sustainability Committee. “When we’re talking about larger sustainability issues we want to make a point about that for younger generations, because we’re the ones who can change that.”
“I’ve completely stopped using plastic bottles,” Sophomore Charlene Tosh said. “I found out what an impact it causes, and how much we spend on fuels to tote the plastics around the whole country. We have drinkable water here and some countries don’t even have that.”
This country may have plenty of clean water, but there’s still plenty of issues to work out—especially in the desert.
“We have this huge infrastructure that was created to allow the city of Tucson, and places like Phoenix and Las Vegas, to even exist in their current state,” Burke said. “We’ve already spent billions of dollars to bring water here, and now we don’t even want to use it.”
Next week, get a better understanding of some of the murky issues facing Arizona.
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