Lafayette College
EN-5: Outreach Campaign

Green Move Out, led by Sarah Yencha from Residence Life, is a campus-wide sustainability and community service effort where students recycle their unused or gently used household items by donating them to local organizations. Items are collected at the end of the year, when many students throw out things such as coats, clothing, books and school supplies.

In 2014, 6048 pounds of items were collected and donated to various community organizations. The greatest percentage of items collected were cleaning and bedding supplies, at 31%.

Every year, Lafayette puts hosts many speakers and events with a focus on the environment and sustainability, in order to celebrate Earth Week. These events are directed at both students and employees, and meant to educate about environmental activism and to celebrate such activism. The events are sponsored by student organizations and departments including LEAP, Alternative School Break Club, Biology Department, Health and Life Sciences Program, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, and Mechanical Engineering Department.

Past Earth Week events have included talks about student trips to Costa Rica and their study of sustainable agriculture, talks about student trips to North Carolina and their study of environmental injustice, talks from the Nuture Nature Center and about environmental outreach and the inaugural Robert ’69 and Margaret Pastor Lecture in International Affairs given by Jimmy Carter. The Engineering Studies Department, headed by Dru Germanoski and Kira Lawrence, was part of Earth Week programming.

The student group, Lafayette Environmental Awareness and Protection (LEAP), advised by Katalin Fabian, tried to encourage student to reduce energy consumption within their residence halls. They ran an outreach campaign to get students to turn out light while not in use, unplugging electronics and chargers when they aren't needed, using cold water for laundry and shortening shower times. They gave out CFL lightbulbs in the residence halls, to encourage students to install them in their rooms and therefore save more energy on lighting. Lafayette Take Back The Tap is a student movement to reduce the bottle water consumption on campus. So far, students have been collecting pledges signatures for two semesters and are at around 500. The pledge states that the signer will work to use a reusable water bottle and work to reduce their use of plastic ones. They have also performed taste tests in which the majority have always chosen tap water as the one they prefer. Last earth month they created a water bottle structure made of plastic water bottles to educate people on the issue. They also pushed administration to remove water bottles from the meal plan in Lower Farinon dining hall. They have submitted multiple capital requests for a water refill station within lower farinon that we are still waiting to hear the results on. We had a very successful brown bag presentation on the marketing of bottled water. The faculty advisor is Arthur Kney.