The Colgate community comes together each year to celebrate sustainability during 13 Days of Green. This Colgate tradition, with programs leading up to Earth Day, highlights local and global sustainability challenges and initiatives, and demonstrates what individuals can do to inspire change.
A few of the events throughout the program, detailed below, show the breadth of programming during 13 Days of Green.
“The Sustainability Office interns wanted to create a diverse set of programs in order to reach as many students in as many sectors of campus as possible,” said Isabel Dove ’19, an intern in the Office of Sustainability.
So far, students have engaged in lectures including, “Sowing Against Systems, Branches vs Networks, Unearthing Slowness,” during which Assistant Professor of Art and Art History Margaretha Haughwout discussed the efforts of various organizations — including Trees of Tomorrow and A Priori — that work to disrupt the contemporary understanding of the plant life around us.
Other program highlights have included an April 16 screening of Paris to Pittsburgh, a National Geographic documentary that personalizes the global climate change phenomenon by focusing on its implications for the lives of everyday Americans.
A pop-up thrift shop event on April 18 stood out, said Dove, as it helped broaden perspectives of everyday sustainable practices.
“It was really great to see people have the chance to give their old clothes new life and to find new additions to their wardrobe,” said Dove. “Often when people think about sustainability, they think about recycling things like paper and plastic bottles. This pop-up thrift shop is a great reminder that textiles can also be reused as a way to minimize consumerism.”
There’s still time to participate in 13 Days of Green programming. Upcoming event highlights include a Brown Bag discussion on Colgate’s carbon neutrality goal, a day of community service, a screening of Habitat Earth and Expedition Reef in the Ho Tung Visualization Lab, and a lecture by journalist Ann Curry. Additionally, final events include an Earth Day action partyand ice cream social celebrating Colgate’s carbon neutrality.