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?”
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.”
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.