A panel of activists encouraged students to participate in environmental sustainability through community gardening and by focusing on the long-term green movement at the Second Annual Earth Day Summit at the Fritz Knoebel School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management last Friday.
The panel took sustainability questions from a crowd of 130 throughout the afternoon. They talked about the importance of students encouraging their peers to participate in simple tasks such as recycling, minimizing vehicle usage and carbon-composting garbage.
“It is especially important when it comes to community resilience to get people excited,” said panel member James Laurie, nicknamed “Jonny 5,” of the Flobots.
The Flobots are an alternative rock band from Denver that focuses on environmental issues in their music. In addition, they maintain an online non-profit organization, Flobots.org, seeks to equip individuals with ideas and tools to further the green movement.
Hillary Dobos, a research partner in the Strategic Energy Analysis Center of the Colorado Governor’s Office, addressed the question of how the city can actively pursue green policies without raising taxes. Dobos said that the governor’s office is consistently looking for ways to participate in cleaning up the city. She talked about how Colorado citizens are already paying the price for pollution.
“What are the costs of not having public transportation set up?” asked Dobos. “We need to look at the externalises and decide what’s most important.”
Dobos also said that people need to stop focusing on the immediate and temporary status and start considering long term ramifications. She talked about the value of writing laws with attention to pollution and environmental policies.
“Your vote is power,” said Dobos. “Because of your votes, 30 percent of Colorado energy needs to be renewable by 2020.”
Brianna Borin, a DU alumna who works with the sustainability aspect of Snooze AM Eatery, also talked about using people power to make Denver more environmentally friendly. “Snooze” is a local Denver restaurant, owned by two DU graduates, brothers Adam and Jon Schelgel.
According to Borin, Snooze locations compost 90 percent of their garbage, use energy-efficient appliances, sensory lighting and serve coffee in hand mugs.
Borin said people are the key to encouraging more government rebates and programs that better support “greener” actions.
“Take the bus, ride a bike,” said Borin. “It’s all about the demand you create for those types of things. The more demand, the more funding that goes to it.”
Laurie said that people need to become more politically mature and accept that increased taxes are a necessary way to create revenue needed to fund environmentally-safe programs.
“When you buy a plane ticket, you have the option to buy a carbon offset,” said Laurie. “But if you’re strapped for cash, you often won’t purchase it. We need to make it no longer an option.”
The panel also discussed the impact of the recession on the green movement.
Shannon Spurlock, the community initiatives coordinator at Denver Urban Gardens (DUG), said that DUG set up a program where they worked with the federally-funded assistance program Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
Through the program, WIC beneficiaries were able to trade one hour’s worth of work in an organic garden for a bag of fresh produce.
“If you are a poor student, growing your own food is a really easy way to get cheap organic food,” said Spurlock. “Share it with your neighbors and start a community.”
Mariah Shell, co-founder of the event said that she wanted the event to be inspiring and educating to help students realize what they can do not only throughout campus, but in their lives as well.
“I think it’s really important to show DU students what their community is doing towards helping the environment and give them tips to help them continue it throughout their lives,” said Shell.
According to Shell, 130 people attended the event last year, sponsored by Campus Cycles, Xcel Energy, Earth Era, the DU Sustainability Committee Environmental Team.
