Iowa State’s Office of Sustainability and the Live Green! Initiative is working to bring sustainability-related organizations together to celebrate Campus Sustainability Month.

Live Green! is an initiative by the Office of Sustainability meant to encourage students, faculty and staff to commit to green lifestyles. The Live Green! team is working to celebrate October as Campus Sustainability Month by planning a tabling event.

The event will include student organizations, local businesses and other organizations with sustainability focuses. The event is set to take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 25 on Parks Library’s south lawn.

“One of the really cool connections I think that happens at this event is that students and faculty and staff find different opportunities to volunteer,” said Merry Rankin, director of sustainability at Iowa State. “They learn about different events to attend and they connect with different resources.”

Rankin said that the Live Green! Initiative hopes to hold the event in order to celebrate the efforts of the Office of Sustainability while leaving an impact on the Ames community.

“I think it also brings out the fact that we all have something to learn from each other,” Rankin said. “We all have expertise in different ways. So, I think that’s a really fun part of the event also is just learning from each other, making different connections, experiencing those different opportunities.“

The event hopes to encompass the three pillars of sustainability: environmental, social and economic sustainability. The Live Green! Initiative will invite organizations that have to do with any of the three pillars.

Haylie Moore, a student studying global resource systems and ag business and a campus and communication intern for the Live Green! Initiative, said the groups present at the event will include a variety of organizations, from Facilities Planning and Management to the city of Ames and Engineers for a Sustainable world, to name a few.

“For me personally, it just shows that sustainability goes further than recycling and reducing waste and all the typical things that we associate with it,” Moore said. “It also hits on those three pillars; once again, just shows that a person can be sustainable in multiple ways.”

The Campus Sustainability Month Celebration will also include a prize giveaway. Students who come by the event can qualify for prizes by stopping and interacting with organizations. The more organizations students talk to, the better the prizes they may receive.

“I hope with this we’re able to really draw in the crowd and get people to stop and take even just a few minutes to kind of reflect on themselves and how they can start implementing these sustainable practices,” Moore said.

Haley Wegener, a junior in political science and a campus and community engagement intern for the Live Green! Initiative, said the event is a great opportunity for students with little association with sustainability to get interested and involved in sustainable organizations.

“A thing that I really love about Live Green! and something that I’ve realized as I started working here is how many people take for granted the things that Live Green! does,” Wegener said. “Like garbage cans, recycling bins and all this stuff like no one even realizes that it takes a lot of work to get those things put out, and it’s just something that everyone uses and everyone needs.”

Wegener said she hopes the Campus Sustainability celebration helps give students a venue to learn more about sustainable options without having to actively seek out information. By bringing these organizations together in a public area, students can easily come together and learn about sustainability options.

“I really, really like that because I think living sustainably is something that everyone should be doing and/or something that everybody should know about,” Wegener said. “So, I just like that we’re able to educate and get people involved who wouldn’t have been involved in the first place.