Photo by Sophia Gonzalez

Sophia Gonzalez

Sustainability-focused clubs at Florida Southern College outline eco-friendly incentives to educate and promote on-campus environmental awareness. 

SGA’s sustainability committee

The sustainability committee’s goals include increasing recycling throughout the campus, providing reusable plastic bags and containers, education about light pollution and food waste, and finding a proper replacement for paper straws.

Head of the sustainability committee Justin Kellher stated that the best way to inspire sustainability in the student body is through “education, passion and leading by example.”

Kelleher stated that one of the major issues on campus is recycling. Students have expressed to SGA that there is a lack of recycling bins on campus, and what is being thrown in the recycling bins is usually thrown away due to cross-contamination. 

“Through talking with faculty, we have also found that many of our recycled items are contaminated because there are things such as food placed in them, so we need to push out information to help people avoid accidentally ruining a bin of perfectly recyclable waste,” Kelleher said. 

Some events that the committee has planned for the future is SGA’s annual “Earth-Yay” event. In this event the committee tables and hosts several events in order to help educate people about sustainability. 

In a more recent effort to educate students, the sustainability committee is working on creating graphics that highlight some of the “less [talked] about parts of [Thanksgiving],” including food waste and overconsumption.

The committee also plans on asking people and students to give their old furniture to them so that they can properly dispose of it. 

“We’re hoping to put ourselves out there and help people who don’t fully understand what sustainability means and how to practice it can see others doing it in their community,” Kelleher said.

Flosoco

The president of Flosoco, Claire Bonham, has similar goals to those of the sustainability committee. 

“Flosoco has been trying to revamp as an organization to improve our presence on campus, as well as work towards our goal, which is to improve sustainability and conservation efforts campus-wide,” Bonham said. 

Throughout the year, Flosoco hosts a variety of events. They usually host multiple lake clean-ups throughout the year.  

Their biggest event of the semester, according to Bonham, has been their recycling event, in which Flosoco gave students recycling bins that they decorated and took to their rooms. 

“As recycling accessibility has greatly improved in Florida Southern’s campus [in] the past year or so, we wanted to make it easier for students to utilize those resources that SGA has provided for us,” Bonham said. 

Although there are more recycling bins throughout campus, they are not properly labeled, so students may not know that they are there. 

Therefore, a goal of Flosoco’s, according to Bonham, is to increase student awareness of recycling options at Florida Southern. 

“A couple students have also vocalized to me that they would appreciate an on-campus compost bin to reduce food waste,” Bonham said. 

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