AASHE Members Celebrate Earth Day
In celebration of Earth Day, AASHE invited the higher education sustainability community to partake in socially distanced sustainable activities and share their stories by submitting images to the Campus Sustainability Hub.
Over a dozen colleges and universities from Bangladesh, Cameroon, Canada, and the United States took a moment to share images of their recent Earth Day celebrations! We are inspired by how these institutions safely engaged students and community members in campus activities and events. We share these institutions’ stories in hopes that you may gain inspiration as well. Happy Earth Day!
Featured Institutions
Through a partnership with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, Bowie State University invited nearby Collington Retirement Community to join together for an Earth Day stream clean-up event in nearby Horsepen Park. The park holds a stream that directly connects to the Patuxent River, a major tributary in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
In celebration of Earth Month and sustainability on campus, students from Bowling Green State University came together to plant trees for the benefit of the University community while following COVID-19 safety procedures.
Daffodil International University (DIU) observed Earth Day 2021 with a tree planting initiative on campus as well as the nearby community. The Neem tree (Azadirachta indica) was chosen for plantings due to its popularity in the region for its ethnomedicinal properties.
Florida State University hosted a “Don’t be a Fool’s Day” celebration at Suwannee Green on April 1st. The event promoted the use of reusable materials on campus and informed students about Seminole Dining’s sustainability initiatives, how they can get involved in their community’s sustainability initiatives, and encouraged students to take an earth month pledge.
Iowa State University Dining handed out pots, seeds, and compost to students. The compost was from the campus compost facility, which takes in food waste from our dining centers. ISU Dining contributes approximately 300 tons of food waste to the compost facility each year.
For the second consecutive year Ohio University’s Office of Sustainability partnered with the local Arbor Day Foundation chapter to collect and test acorns in the fall from a red oak tree on our Campus Green, stratify the viable acorns over the winter, and plant them in the spring as saplings. This year over one-hundred saplings were taken for planting.
Students, staff, and faculty at OSU-Cascades participated in an erosion control service project lead by OSU-Cascades Sustainability Program on a construction site on Oregon State University’s campus in Bend, Oregon.
The Tufts Office of Sustainability and the Tufts Eco-Reps organized several events to offer an in-person, Covid-safe Earth Day event. This year, the event was reorganized to include nine stations operating simultaneously across campus to align with COVID safety restrictions. Students who went to 4+ stations and got their “scavenger hunt” cards marked off were entered in a raffle.