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The Earth Week committee has struggled this year with lack of time, members and enthusiasm, but nevertheless a series of events to celebrate and promote environmental awareness will be held April 21-25.
The committee is working with Maine Bound, the University Bookstore and the Student Environmental Action Coalition this year. Events include a clothing swap, a Green Bike workshop, a tote bag sale, an opinion board and other tentative events, according to Scott Wilkerson, a sustainability officer.
The clothing swap will be held on the mall April 22, which is Earth Day. Collection boxes will be placed in residence halls for clothes and small appliances. The Sustainability Office will recycle the appliances and any clothes remaining after the swap will be sold in a yard sale next weekend. The profits from the sale will be donated to the Penjajawoc Marsh through the Audubon Society and any leftover money will be donated to Spruce Run or the Orono Thrift Store.
The tote bag sale is being sponsored by the Bookstore. A student-designed Earth Week logo is being silk-screened onto canvas tote bags, which will be sold in the Bookstore. A portion of the profits from the bags will be donated to the committee for 2004 planning. The Bookstore will also post an Earth Week display.
Maine Bound came up with the idea to have a workshop for building wooden bike racks for the Green Bikes, which do not get locked up. The Sustainability Office will provide the wood, but Maine Bound is organizing the event and is in charge of instructing students to make the racks.
There will be an opinion board put in the Union near the information booth with a range of questions for people to comment on.
“I think it’ll probably cover the gamut,” Wilkerson said.
Wilkerson, who chairs the committee, is hoping the group can secure funding to bring a few bands to campus the weekend before Earth Week. The bands include Fot�, an African drumming group, Soul Lemon and the Funkizon. If the bands come, they will play inside the Stillwater Canal Co. Pub or possibly outside.
The committee has been hard pressed to come up with events this spring. There have only been five regular members, all of whom are stretched pretty thin, according to Wilkerson.
“If we had a lot of time, a lot of energy and a lot of people, we’d have a lot more,” he said.
In years past, different groups and departments have organized events or incorporated projects they were already working on for Earth Week. The ’90′s were the “heyday” of Earth Week on campus, Wilkerson said, holding events every night of the week. In the late ’90′s there was not an Earth Day celebrated at UMaine. The challenge is trying to build that energy back up, Wilkerson said.
Wilkerson said he has some ideas about how to raise participation. He wants to start organizing the event in September, with monthly meetings that will increase January. He would like to get the Campus Activities Board involved.
“They have the ears, the eyes and the audience that we want,” Wilkerson said.
He is also talking to students about creating an Earth Day club on campus that would organize the events and solidify an ad hoc group.
Wilkerson said he doesn’t believe it is a lack of interest that has lowered participation.
“We’re not getting on the right radar screens,” he said.
