The new sustainability committee of the Engineering Student Council held its second event Wednesday, “SEA(d)S and Sustainability,” to raise awareness for its cause.
The event took place on the Wilsdorf patio on Engineers Way, and it aimed to get students walking by the nearby lecture buildings between classes to think about sustainability. Each participant was given a palm-size compostable pot to fill with soil and wildflower seeds, which could then be grown when the students went home.
Sydney Applegate and Victoria Bartlett, second-year Engineering students, are the co-directors of the new committee.
“The Engineering Student Council partnered with [University] sustainability for the renewable energy research fair last fall, and since then, I’ve been working to collaborate much more and this committee was founded,” Applegate said. “We have a couple different focuses, they being infrastructure, curriculum and programming.”
While the co-directors have identified many ways in which each of these three main branches could improve, they see education as the most prevalent area to tackle as the committee's first goal.
“Every first-year engineer takes an introduction to engineering class,” Bartlett said. “We’ve talked with Professor [Dana] Elzey about adding a component of sustainability to that, and we’ll like to do that in the upcoming fall semester. It’s our idea that professors will incorporate this into their curriculum so that every project that they do would consider ‘how is this sustainable?’”
Applegate, who plans to major in civil engineering, said other professors, especially in her department, have shown increasing interest in sustainability and how it is being integrated into civil design.
Concerning the programming branch of the committee, the co-directors see significant potential for improving the Engineering Student Council’s events. Applegate said recent events within the council have been procuring compostable items only, and producing zero waste.
The co-directors also discussed their plans for infrastructure.
“There’s a lot of construction going on right now, ao we want to work with the architect’s office and some of the builders,” Bartlett said. “I’m sure they are taking sustainability into account, but we want to see if there’s anything else we can add.”
On the other hand, Applegate said work can be done with existing underused infrastructure, and she hopes that outdoor spaces in engineering buildings can be used more frequently.
Bartlett said the committee provides particular applications of sustainability for engineers.
“You have to be conscious of what you are designing [and] what materials you use,” Bartlett said. “Labs use a huge amount of energy and water on Grounds. Obviously, we want their research to be done, but we want to see if we can make it a little bit more sustainable.”
Both co-directors said collective action is important, and that they would welcome small actions by everybody.
“It’s not every little thing — it’s all the big things,” Bartlett says. “If we all come together and we all do something, we can accomplish some very meaningful things.”
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