The semester is coming to a close, and the Eco-Reps are finishing up their duties. The Eco-Reps are emptying and turning in their compost bins, recycling plastic bags, and encouraging students to be sustainable as they move out (by using Campus Wall!). As a thank-you, CSE hosted a luncheon at Gaia for the Eco-Reps. If you’ve never been to Gaia, I highly recommend checking it out!
I am certainly going to miss the Eco-Reps. Working with them has been a pleasure – this current group has been creative, enthusiastic, and hard-working. Many of these wonderful Eco-Reps are leaving next semester, due to graduation, study abroad, and other internship positions. Luckily, we have a new group of Eco-Reps for next year!
A number of successful events have been held this semester, and 161 students attended Eco-Rep events… until last Saturday!
This past Saturday, the Eco-Reps were lucky enough to be invited to participate in the Upper Class Quads Block Party. The Upper Quads provided food, music, games, and prizes for everyone. A few Eco-Reps decided to not only tell people about sustainability, but showed people how fun being sustainable can be.
The Eco-Reps were excited to show off the bike blenders
Two of the bike blenders were brought to the event and were a huge success. Handlebar volunteers built these bikes so that the rear wheel directly connects to the blender – no electric generators are needed, just a rider! The incredible thing is that these two blenders make smoothies much more quickly than a standard blender that is plugged into an outlet, meaning we can make a smoothie in less than a minute!
Bike blending is the best way to make a smoothie!
Students lined up to blend their own smoothies, and many came back for seconds. Over 50 smoothies were made! The finished smoothies were either poured into students’ reusable cups, or were poured into compostable cups (we brought the compost bin from DW so that it was easy to compost).
Bike powered smoothies are the best!
The Eco-Reps also brought three plastic bag floor pillows to raffle off to students. These pillows were made by the Eco-Reps, by sewing together old Admissions Office banners and stuffing them with the plastic bags that are put in the plastic bag recycling bins, located in the HUB and residence halls.
After testing the floor pillows, students claimed that they were “the softest pillow ever” and “better than TemperPedic.” One student even exclaimed that his “butt has never been so happy!”
The winners of the raffle skipped and ran to claim their prizes, while other students asked if the Eco-Reps would make more of these luxurious pillows for students (the answer is yes!).
Two lucky winners pose with their prizes
The Eco-Reps could not have asked for a better event to end the semester with!
