The Office of Sustainability (OOS) and the Tufts Eco-Representatives have joined forces to present a number of green-themed events today in honor of the annual Campus Sustainability Day.
The day marks the end of the Zero Waste Challenge, in which participants carry all the wrappers, cups and garbage they produce over a weeklong period in a plastic bag.
"It's just a way to see the amount of waste you're actually generating and bring awareness to the ... ingrained condition to throw away things," senior Claudia Tajima, the Eco-Rep coordinator for Campus Sustainability Day, said.
The approximately 200 students who participated in the Zero Waste Challenge will gather on the Res Quad at noon today to drop off the garbage they have accumulated over the week. The trash they generated will be placed next to a mountain of waste collected from five uphill residence halls.
"We are emptying those dorms' dumpsters onto the Res Quad so that the visual impact will catch peoples' attention and change their habits," Haskell Hall Eco-Rep Lauren Deaderick, a senior, said. "We want to show people how much could have been recycled or composted."
The piles of trash will be on display on the Res Quad today and taken away by the afternoon.
Tufts Dining will also participate in the day's line-up with a themed dinner in DewickMacPhie Dining Center tonight. "The Story of Bananas" dinner models "The Story of Stuff," Annie Leonard's book on global consumption patterns. It will feature an educational look at the life span of the banana.
"The overarching goal of the event ... is to inform student decisions so that they know the moral, environmental and physical significance - past and present - of this food they might be eating multiple times a day," OOS intern Anne Elise Stratton, a sophomore, told the Daily in an email.
The dinner will also feature interactive games, banana-based foods and prizes for participants.
In honor of Campus Sustainability Day, Leonard will also appear on campus tomorrow to speak about her book and answer audience questions in Cohen Auditorium at 8 p.m.
"The Story of Stuff," an account of global consumption patterns and the impact of waste on society, was this year's common reading book for all incoming freshmen as part of their orientation program.
The book was part of a non-profit project Leonard started in 2008 after she produced a popular, kid-friendly web film on the culture of waste in the United States. The video has been viewed millions of times and embraced by teachers as a way to simplify issues like pollution and global warming for a younger audience.
