To kick off Sustainability Week at JWU Providence, the BRIDGE Center and JWU Student Activists Supporting Sustainability (SASS) recently co-hosted a panel discussion titled “Rising Tide: Sustainability + Water Quality in RI.”
Although the topic was ostensibly sea-level rise — a crucial one for coastline-rich Rhode Island — the discussion constantly looped back to strategies for improving the JWU community’s waste-reduction efforts.
Panelists included:
Author and historian Linda Brennan kicked things off with a quick history of Earth Day, which began in 1970 as a way to rally Americans around environmental causes.
The natural follow-up question was, of course, “How can we at JWU reduce our waste, particularly food waste? What can we save and repurpose through composting?”
Making a Difference at JWU
SASS VP Solomon talked about the importance of leveraging the wide range of knowledge at JWU. As an example, she offered her own experiences as a culinary student: “We’re learning about overfishing and using native species,” she noted. “Eating fruits and vegetables out of season is also such a Westernized notion. When I was in Sicily and tried to put a tomato and an avocado together in a salad, they were shocked: ‘They have different growing seasons!’”
Martinez, who is a Media and Communications Studies major, noted that a big goal of SASS is to bring the Downcity and Harborside campuses together (also a big initiative of the JWU Providence Student Government Association): “Together, we can really thrive.”
Sustainability Week Events
SASS has a whole slate of events scheduled for Earth Week, including the Sustainability Fair on 4/27, which is co-hosted by JWU Providence’s Energy Conservation Office (ECO) and BRIDGE Center.
Browse all the events here. The signature events for the week are as follows:
Follow JWU SASS to keep up with events, film screenings and ways to can get involved.
Wave banner photograph courtesy of D.S. Brennan Photography.
(TOP) RISING TIDE: JWU PROVIDENCE RECENTLY HOSTED AN EARTH DAY DISCUSSION AT THE BRIDGE CENTER. PHOTO: D.S. BRENNAN PHOTOGRAPHY / (BOTTOM) ECO PANELISTS, L-R: NATASHA MARTINEZ, RUTH SOLOMON, LINDA COTTA BRENNAN AND DIANA BRENNAN.