This past Monday was Earth Day. Members of the Northwestern and Evanston communities stepped onto the grass for some environmentally friendly celebrations.
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On Saturday, students gathered onto Deering Lawn for the second annual Greenout!, hosted by Northwestern’s Associated Student Government. The weather was brisk and energies were up. Student organizations, bands, and visitors came together for some live music, food, and club activities.
Weinberg sophomore Zia Robbins was there representing Wild Roots. Wild Roots is a student directed garden focused on sustainable food production and growing vegetables to donate to local communities.
Robbins said she particularly appreciated that the event gave an opportunity to expand Northwestern’s environmental community.
[Zia Robbins] I was really excited to see all the other sustainability organizations and like walk around and talk to them. I love connecting with them and having events, you know joint events with other orgs. And also just connecting with students who maybe aren’t as involved with the environmental org circle, because people who aren’t necessarily involved might get the opportunity to walk by and connect with our club.
Alumni and now student grad, Vlad Evirkovets led a booth spreading awareness about plant biology through a fun guessing game with prizes.
[Vlad Evirkovets] There’s a phenomenon that people call plant blindness where people will look at, you know, a bunch of vegetation and they’ll just be like, “Oh, this is nice. It’s green.” But they don’t know what it is, and sometimes it might be invasive stuff, like buckthorn that we have here, Then people… When you try to cut it, people will be all up in arms. Like why are you cutting our trees, even though they’re actually bad. You know, the first step to combating this plant blindness is to try and introduce people to some basic planted identification, and it’s like you might think this is a niche area. This is like, you know, why would anyone need to know this. But then again, if you look at the way our society is why do we know all the logos of different brands? Like that’s not really something we need to know, but we just do so, like why can’t we learn the names of all these plants?
In addition to spreading awareness about environmental efforts, Greenout drew a crowd through its live performances.
[Carson Larry] Definitely the live music. I know the band Revere. I’ve been all the shows and I’m really big fan of them.
That was sophomore Carson Larry. His sentiments were echoed by a few others, including Robbins
[Robbins] I love the live music! So fun.
and freshman Abigail Lev.
[Abigail Lev] I think it’s really nice to have the bands playing in the background. I like having the ambience, and it’s making me really excited to be here.
According to ASG’s executive officer of sustainability, Sam Bull, the end goal of the event was to simply give students something to enjoy.
[Sam Bull] But yeah, I mean the main idea was just to like celebrate Earth Day. Earth Day’s on Mondays. So yeah, just give people like a break from studying and just come out and chill.
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Less than a mile away from campus, community members gathered for another Earth Day celebration. This time, for the 50th birthday of Evanston’s Ecology Center.
[Margaret Isaacson] Our Center really focuses on Environmental Education programming. So, we have an animal classroom with live animals that people can learn about and visit. We do outreach programs in the community, and we offer programs year round as well as summer camps that really focus on nature exploration and environmental education.
That was Margaret Isaacson, the Conservation and Outdoors Division Manager with the Parks and Recreation Department. Although the center caters to all age groups, according to Isaacson, the animal programming gets the kids especially excited.
[Isaacson] It’s really for all ages, but we definitely have a high volume of kids coming to the Ecology Center. The animals are a big draw.
[Michelle Hwang] I bet that’s a big hit. What are some of the animals that you can visit in the classroom?
[Isaacson] So right now our animals are off site. They’re living at the South End Community Center, which is soon to be opened. Our animals range from reptiles to amphibeans, we’ve got some mammals. So we’ve got a couple of guinea pigs. We have a big sulcata tortoise. She weighs about 50 or 60 pounds now. She’s been growing for at least the last fifteen to twenty years or so. We’ve got a couple of snakes. We’ve got some insects. So a whole variety of animals
Kids were in high attendance at the Earth Day Fest, which was well planned for.
[Amanda D’Agostino] Yeah, we have bubbles, that’s been a big hit, a big bubble station. And then the Ecology Center is hosting like natural artifact exploration and a few other like tree identification things over there.
Amanda D’Agostino, the Parks and Recreation Department Special Events Coordinator, explained that the above activities and more were meant to engage attendees at a higher level.
[D’Agostino] So we didn’t want just a resource fair where you get a pamphlet and walk away. We wanted you to actually do something at the booth to connect with what their mission and values are, and kind of all of their mission and values align with the Evanston Ecology Center and the whole conservation aspect and the go green mentality.
Six-year-old Jordan, and her Grandmother Cecelia, were one of the many families in attendance. I think it’s safe to say the two of them had a good time.
[Jordan] I did the project where we build something and then we get a book.
[Cecelia] Well, I think you know, it’s important that we celebrate the earth. I just wish we could celebrate it every day. You know, just don’t you think that would be good? You like that idea? Yeah, it would be fun then. This morning I was out at her school. We were working on cleaning up the gardens in the school, and I’m very interested in environmental kinds of things. So I think this is good way to expose people.
These past few days were particularly full of environment-focused activities. But as Cecelia said, it’s nice to show some appreciation for the planet we live on every day. Just a little green thought to keep in mind.
For WNUR News, we’re Michelle Hwang and Moriah Pettway.
