By Nate West
News Editor
Each year, people around the world celebrate Earth Day. This year, St. Bonaventure is joining the movement.
The Earth Day Green Up will take place from 3-5 p.m. on Monday, Cody Clifford, Student Government Association (SGA) executive board president, said.
According to Clifford, the goal of this Earth Day event isn’t just to clean up campus — it’s an opportunity to give back to the university and help everyone understand that we shouldn’t care about the campus and environment only on Earth Day.
The event is sponsored by both Tread Lightly and the SGA. This is the first Earth Day event SGA has ever done, Clifford said.
“We haven’t had an Earth Day event, but SGA has held Campus Cleanups lowercase last semester when the weather was nicer,” Clifford said. “It’s something that we would like to continue doing next fall.”
Tread Lightly has been participating in RecycleMania, a nation-wide competition that encourages waste reduction activities, the RecycleMania website says. The results are noticeable, according to Clifford.
“This past month, Tread Lightly had a huge on-campus recycling campaign. Throughout the campaign recycling efforts were raised by 19 percent,” Clifford said.
The areas slated for clean up are the old castle property (site of Bona Square), the old fitnesss center, behind and around phase one and two townhouses, the outdoor tennis courts and the athletic fields, Sister Suzanne Kush, director of the Franciscan Center for Social Concern, said.
Having the cleanup on Earth Day highlights the importance of keeping our beautiful campus clean, Kush said.
“As stewards of the earth, we need to see the whole picture,” Kush said. “We can’t see everything in isolation, it needs to be seen in relation to all of creation.
St. Bonaventure was recognized as a Tree Campus USA and is looking to re-certify this year, Clifford said. In order to re-certify, there are certain criteria that must be met and events which must be held.
“This specific even isn’t an effort to help re-certify as a Tree Campus USA school, but will probably help with the process,” Clifford said. “We are having a tree planting on Friday, April 26 at 12:45 p.m. next to the Warming Hut. This is a Tree Campus USA event. All are welcome and it should only take 15 to 20 minutes.”
