Students stopped at booths to find information on how to be eco-friendly as part of Green UH Day. | Paul Crespo/The Daily Cougar
UH Coogs changed the red pride to green pride on Wednesday at the Green UH Day at Butler Plaza.
Student organizations and supporting groups, including Green Mountain Energy and METRO, set up in front of the M.D. Anderson Memorial Library to showcase campus environmental successes and promote green efforts by sharing tips and ideas with students as they walked to class.
“It is important to us as a department to be sustainable, but it’s also part of the University’s larger mission to be green, so we do what we can to help out,” said Marketing Coordinator of UH Dining Services Amber Arguijo.
Students were encouraged to stop at the UH Dining Services tent to make biodegradable playdough out of flour, salt, water and food coloring.
“We wanted to do something food related and so this is something that we came up with that was interactive,” Arguijo said. “We didn’t want to just set up information about what we are doing because we do a lot of sustainable things that are more large scale.”
The UH bookstore was also part of Green UH Day as they displayed a number of the recycled and biodegradable products available for sale, including T-shirts made by the fair labor company Alta Gracia.
“Alta Gracia is a brand that promotes using fair wages and fair hours for their workers — the design of the shirt was chosen in a competition last year and was designed by a UH student, we have an entire display of their items at the store,” said Mary Smith, a studio arts senior who works at the book store.
Green UH Day also featured eco-friendly displays from off-campus entities, with Green Mountain Energy in attendance as a contributor to the University. The company set up a display illustrating a solar panel that the company is installing at the Central Utility Plant with compactors.
Students also took advantage of the METRO booth, which brought in representatives to provide students with a Q card for half-price transportation fare and to demonstrate how to properly secure bicycles when riding the bus.
“We are coming out today to encourage keeping the environment green and we are focusing on ‘biking and riding’ with Metro; a lot of people did not know about it and we want to show them how easy it is,” METRO representative Ramona Gordon said.
To help increase involvement, Green UH Day festivities also gave students a chance to enter a raffle by completing a scavenger hunt.
“We are alerting everyone about sustainability and recycling by telling them about our organization,” said Gordon Rainwater, a computer science junior.“We are also trying to use social media to get our message out.”
For more information about Green UH initiatives and events, visit the organization’s Facebook page at http://on.fb.me/uL7O8V.
It's too bad I didn't even to drop a quote; the guy next to me got interviewed like right after I had left for only 5 minutes! :PAnyway it was fun, and it seems a lot of students appreciated what environmental opportunities are here on campus.