In the first year without Veishea, students have been scrambling to find a replacement for the much loved tradition. Wicitra Mahotama, president of the Iowa State Environmental Science Club, thinks his club has found the solution.

At the beginning of the school year, ISESC was brainstorming its events for the year when Hannah Hoglund, vice president of ISESC, suggested Eco Week, a weeklong celebration of all things environmentally friendly.

“It’s been an idea for a year and finally become a realization,” Mahotama said. “But as a small, new organization the challenge was how do we do a whole week?”

When word got out that ISESC was creating Eco Week, other environmental clubs stepped in to help. With the aid of the other clubs, Eco Week began to grow into a celebration of all of the work student run clubs do to promote a healthy environment.

“We decided that [Eco Week] was a perfect opportunity for all of these clubs to collaborate and to do something great for the university,” Mahotama said. “It’s amazing how much a group of students can do just from a single idea. It’s been humbling and exciting all at the same time.”

Mahotama thinks his generation of students is more aware of environmental issues than previous generations.

“Call us the Greeneration,” Mahotama said.

There are currently 22 student run environmental clubs signed onto the Live Green initiative. These clubs focus on improving the awareness and understanding of how to be environmentally friendly.

“I don’t think a lot of people know what to do about helping our environment or how to be sustainable, so we are hoping when students come to our events they can learn how to be sustainable,” Hoglund said.

But the students in these clubs do more than just educate and spread awareness, they are also involved in programs Iowa State is working on to improve the environmental friendliness of the university. The students are the creative minds behind many of the programs, said Merry Rankin, director of sustainability.

Mahotama said it is important for the university to recognize the work that students do.

“If the university sees the student organizations passion about the environment perhaps that would give us power or authority to push for more environmentally safe policies,” Mahotama said.

While many of the clubs focus on ways the public can make a change in daily life to help the environment, some focus on political activism to make change. ActivUs, a student activism organization, has been responsible for the campus power plant switching three of its five boilers from coal to natural gas, increasing the number of water spigots and hydration stations on campus and now is working on reducing the amount of money the university spends on fossil fuels.

“We think that it is important to have one group focusing on [activism],” said ActivUs president Rivka Fidel said. “It is important to get change made from every angle, but without a specific group for it, the activism angle is often not covered.” 

On Tuesday, ActivUs presented Warren Madden, vice president of business and finance, with a petition containing 500 signatures asking the university to stop funding the fossil fuel companies.

The Iowa Board of Regents ultimately decides on the investments.

Madden doesn’t have complete control over the investments, but he can influence the Board, Fidel said.

The clubs may not all focus on the same solution to being environmental friendly, but there is one thing they all agree on: the environment is worth saving.

“We live on this rock that’s going thousands of miles around this star and this is the only place we can live,” Mahotama said. “We might as well love each other and love the environment around us.” 

The club members believe it is everybody’s responsibility to be environmentally friendly and that the new generation of students is invested in helping the environment.

“It’s the age we’ve been born into,” said Jordan Muell, president of the Green Umbrella. “Sustainability is the same as responsibility. We need to ensure that the future is not compromised so things can stick around for future generations.”

Along with the work that the clubs do, Iowa State continues to look for ways to encourage students to be more environmentally friendly and to make it easier for them to do so.

“[ISU] Dining has looked at some really interesting things related to reusable items, offering a discount if you bring a mug in for your coffee,” Rankin said. “There’s also in the dining centers a reusable clamshell container, and if you purchase one of those it allows you to purchase items to go. When you’re done with it you can take it back to a dining center and trade it in for a new one, rather than having all the waste.”

Rankin said she thinks the university helps promote sustainability in the classroom setting. She said the university offers increased education, awareness and hands-on opportunities so students can “experience how we can impact our plant and our environment” in our day-to-day decisions.

“We can’t do what we don’t know about,” Rankin said.

The university also helps students find volunteer opportunities so they can apply the skills they have learned in class to the real world.

In the future, Rankin hopes to provide opportunities for students to have one on one, or small group discussions with professionals in the sustainability field.

Wednesday marks the 45^th anniversary of Earth Day. U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson created Earth Day in 1970 after he witnessed the effects of a 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, Calif., according to the Earth Day Network. That year on March 22, 20 million people rallied for the protection of the environment. Thousands of colleges and universities hosted protests against the wrongful use of the environment.

“[Since the] beginnings of Earth Day, to keep moving it along and keep giving it momentum, involved people being actively engaged, in particular, young people,” Rankin said.

For his work as the founder of Earth Day, Nelson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton in 1995.

Earth Day seems to be in good hands. With the help of Mahotama, Hoglund, Rivka and Muell, Eco Week is bound to make Earth Day a popular celebration at Iowa State.

“The fight for a clean environment continues in a climate of increasing urgency, as the ravages of climate change become more manifest every day,” according to the Earth Day Network. “We invite you to be a part of Earth Day and help write many more victories and successes into our history. Discover energy you didn’t even know you had. Feel it rumble through the grassroots under your feet and the technology at your fingertips. Channel it into building a clean, healthy, diverse world for generations to come.”