{"id":18311,"date":"2019-10-09T09:00:05","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T16:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=18311"},"modified":"2019-10-16T09:07:55","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T16:07:55","slug":"camosun-college-student-society-to-hold-sustainability-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2019\/10\/09\/camosun-college-student-society-to-hold-sustainability-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun College Student Society to hold Sustainability Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) will hold its Sustainability Day on Thursday, October 17.<\/p>\n

The event is being held at the Interurban campus and is focused on three \u201cpillars,\u201d according to CCSS sustainability director Tamara Bonsdorf: food, transport, and waste. Bonsdorf feels that the interactive aspect of the day will help instill awareness of what sustainability is and how to apply it to everyday life, as well as give students the chance to have a little fun with a serious subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be a food truck there that will have three options of free vegan food\u2014vegetable pakoras and chutney, lentil taco bites, along with a gluten-free option,\u201d says Bonsdorf. \u201cAfter those, we are most likely going to have the [Environmental Technology] students showing microgreens and showing us how to plant them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bonsdorf says that information about alternative transportation methods will be available at Sustainability Day.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the transport pillar, we will have information on how to have alternative transport options, which is helpful especially at Interurban, which is struggling with parking availability, especially with the influx of new students,\u201d she says. \u201cThe information will be on the park and ride\/walk programs, the Camosun Express, and we are also hoping to have a free bike tune-up station.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Students getting involved at a previous year\u2019s Sustainability Day event at Camosun\u2019s Interurban campus (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As part of Sustainability Day, the CCSS will be doing an audit on the waste created in the Centre for Business and Access building at Interurban.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe night before, when the custodian leaves out all the waste bins, some volunteers and myself will organize them and weigh them to see how much was put into the landfill waste that could have been recycled,\u201d says Bonsdorf. \u201cThen we will try to teach on how to properly sort, because we know that there is a lot of confusion about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Second-year University Transfer student Sarah Shumanski says that the secret to teaching sustainability is transparency, and that sustainability shouldn\u2019t just be on a designated day. She says that Camosun College as an institution should be more open about its sustainability practices.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not even sure what Camosun already does, so definitely being more transparent about their current efforts would be a great place to start,\u201d says Shumanski.<\/p>\n

Shumanski suggests starting small with things like compostable utensils.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso making sure that there are compost bins readily available on campus,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause some of the recycling [and] garbage stations don\u2019t have compost, so that is encouraging students to keep throwing out their food.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Shumanski says day-to-day sustainability education is missing from Camosun.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, I think that educational opportunities on campus is the best way to promote sustainability to students,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Second-year Business Administration student Sidney Chapman says that the way to reach students on important issues is to educate them in class.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel that they should be incorporating more content into courses regarding sustainability, as well as other environmental issues today,\u201d says Chapman. \u201cBecause if you are just doing, for instance, a Business Admin diploma, you aren\u2019t really exposed to the issues that we are facing. Students need awareness now, because it\u2019s the world we live in. If we are the next leaders in our generation, then I think it\u2019s important to educate us on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castor Nielsen, also a second-year Business Administration student, agrees that awareness of sustainability should start in the classroom.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey do put a lot of sustainability into some small parts of the courses,\u201d says Nielsen. \u201cIt will often be a topic of projects we have, where we have to reach out to community leaders about their sustainability efforts. But I find it is not exactly mirrored in our lessons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shumanski feels that students would like to have a sustainable college, and that all the college and the CCSS have to do is reach the students.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has to be done in a way that gets people interested,\u201d says Shumanski. \u201cMaybe making it so that whoever runs for [CCSS] student council has a sustainability aspect to their platform.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nielsen says that transportation is definitely one of the biggest sustainability-related issues at the college.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimply because there are so many people driving, as the location is not the most accessible place for people to bus to all the time,\u201d says Nielsen.<\/p>\n

Chapman says that there should be more carpooling options available and adds that food waste is a concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I\u2019m also curious about is whether there is food waste in the cafeteria,\u201d says Chapman.<\/p>\n

Nielsen adds that there is a lot of paper waste at the college.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that there was a transition into more electronic learning, and that we do a lot of our assignments online,\u201d says Nielsen, \u201cbut there is still a ton of paper waste that ends up there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) will hold its Sustainability Day on Thursday, October 17. The event is being held at the Interurban campus and is focused on three \u201cpillars,\u201d according to CCSS sustainability director Tamara Bonsdorf: food, transport, and waste. Bonsdorf feels that the interactive aspect of the day will help instill awareness of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,241],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-october-9-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18313,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18311\/revisions\/18313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}