Sustainability Fair spreads environmental awareness
The Smart Environment Club (SEC) hosted the Sustainability Fair in the Aux Gym on April 12, partnering with several organizations to promote better environmental handling.
“Organizing a fair of this size was difficult and required an entire year of planning. I was constantly preoccupied with organizing spreadsheets, posters, and sending out last-minute emails about the fair,” said junior Angel Chen, president of the SEC.
This was SEC’s first Sustainability Fair in six years, so they were tasked with making new promotional materials, as well as setting up booths throughout the aux gym, under the guidance of their club advisor, Ms. Ikemoto.
The most challenging task for them, however, was finding outside organizations to come to the fair. Chen states SEC sent out hundreds of emails to many environmental organizations.
Though some were met with no reply, many groups throughout the Bay Area came to the event, ranging from local volunteer organizations like Earth Team to the New Roots Institute, whose mission is to end factory farming in the US.
You might’ve also seen a booth handing out mushroom burritos to passersby students. This group, Bay Area Applied Mycology (BAAM), uses mushrooms to improve the environment with their benefits. By gifting students these mushroom burritos, BAAM hopes that students will begin to cultivate their own plants.
SEC also had their own booth, where they promoted projects that they do within the campus as a club.
“I felt like the outcome of the fair was amazing and we had a great turnout of students and organizations. This event has truly been one of the best in SEC,” said Chen.
It’s cool to see that this was student-run. It must have been a lot of work to get companies and organizations to come to an event like this and I think it went pretty well. I went into the fair and was able to look around and talk to the different people at the booths and gain a lot of information about each organization’s role.
As a Sustainability Fair attendee, I enjoyed learning from the various booths about the different organizations and projects. Hopefully events like this can continue happening in the future to promote environmental awareness among the younger generation.
I believe that hosting a environmental fair is important for many students as they can understand how to protect our environment. It is very important for future generations to understand and promote finding ways to make our environment cleaner.