As part of an effort to turn campus green, students representing many organizations from across campus gathered in the Brickyard Wednesday to host the Earth Fair.
The fair, which is part of the Earth Month project, is organized by the University Sustainability Office, showcases exhibits to raise environmental awareness and promote sustainable practices.
Brian Iezzi, a sophomore in textiles engineering and material science and a member of the N.C. State Stewards, said the main reason the fair is held is to illustrate to students how they can be successfully environmentally conscious.
“The sustainability office organizes it to promote individual awareness about environmental sustainability,” Iezzi said. “It’s something that can bring a lot of people together and disperse ideas.”
Iezzi said the fair brings in student organizations from across campus where students can discuss issues in the environmental community.
“The fair brings in many organizations since N.C. State is a great place for people to share ideas,” Iezzi said. “For example, this year we had an organization who displayed an electric bike to reduce fossil-fuel emissions.”
This year, the Stewards created a figure resembling a tyrannosaurus rex out of plastic bags to demonstrate the prevalent use of single-use plastics at N.C. State, according to Iezzi.
“This has been an ongoing project,” Iezzi said. “We had the idea last fall from seeing that the campus has way too many options for using single use plastics. Most of these are plastic bags that end up in a landfill and do not move.”
Iezzi said Stewards created the structure during the last three months from 1500 bags that they collected.
The Stewards set up plastic bag recycling bins across campus for students to recycle responsibly and reduce the use of single-use plastics, according to Iezzi.
The Reduce Plastic Use on Campus program reduces plastic use on campus and collects bags weekly and responsibly. Due to the malfunctions that occur when plastic bags arrive at recycling centers, they require special recycling efforts.
“We mainly did this to show the impact that recycling single-use plastics would have across campus,” Iezzi said. “If we were able to collect that many bags from just a few bins, imagine the impact that would be there if everyone recycled on campus.”
Ryan Kilgore, a freshman in chemical engineering and member of N.C. State Stewards, said the T-rex figure demonstrated the impact of single-use plastics and promoted the idea of sustainability.
“It was a really fun project to do and a really great way to show how people could be more active in recycling across campus” Kilgore said.
The rest of Earth Month features events that students can get involved in to promote sustainability on campus.
Competitions include The Tri-Towers Energy and Water Challenge is a competition between Bowen, Caroll, and Metcalf residence halls challenging the halls to reduce their energy consumption.
