Sustainability Week: Making Earth Day Every Day at JWU

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:

• Natasha Martinez, JWU SASS president
• Ruth Solomon, JWU SASS vice president
• Diana Brennan, marine biologist and photographer
• Linda Crotta Brennan, author of “When the Rivers Burned: The Earth Day Story”

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:

• ECO Fashion Show
• Tuesday, April 26, 7-9pm
• Pepsi Forum Auditorium

• Sustainability Fair
• Wednesday, April 27, 11am-3pm
• Harborside Green Space
• Rain location: Wildcat Center

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.