Keeping UB clean

Earth Day is a strange holiday. Instead of taking a day off, it inspires manual labor.

This Saturday, students in collaboration with UB Green will have the opportunity to clean up the campus environment in celebration of Earth Day.

At 10:30 a.m. in front of the Student Union, students can meet to help clean up the North Campus as a sizeable amount of litter has gathered around the lawns and lakes. The event will take place rain or shine and friends and family are welcome.

According to the Earth Day Network, an international group founded by the organizers of the first Earth Day in 1970, the overall goal of Earth Day is to broaden the environmental movement worldwide and to educate and mobilize people, governments, and corporations to take responsibility for a clean and healthy environment.

Walter Simpson, UB's energy officer, said he feels Earth Day helps give planet the appreciation it deserves.

"Earth Day is an occasion to appreciate the Earth, its awesome beauty, its wonder, and all the unrecognized services it provides us like air and water and the raw materials for just about everything we do," he said. "But we don't do justice to any of this if we practice environmentalism for only a single day a year."

Simpson said he believes the focus of this year's Earth Day should be on climate change and action to prevent further irreversible damage to the planet and the environment.

"This Earth Day, our attention should turn to the problem of global warming and climate change. Hurricane Katrina was a wake up call. More and more scientists are ringing the alarm. They are saying we have one more decade to significantly reduce fossil fuel use and stabilize the climate or the Earth's climate systems may reach 'tipping points' making it impossible to avoid the worst of consequences," Simpson said.

The UB Environmental Network is also working to aide some of the university's ecological woes by circulating a petition to stop the spraying of pesticides on UB lawns to kill weeds and insects.

"I'm representing UBEN at the UB Green clean-up," said Anders Gunnersen a senior social sciences environmental studies major. "It's a great way to raise awareness for the people that have no idea. It's not all about negative stuff like you shouldn't do this or that. It's about the positive things you can do too."

Bonny Mae Stuber, a freshman fine arts major, plans on participating in the day of cleaning.

"I'll probably go to Delaware Park because that's the closest to my house," she said. "I think people should take care of nature everyday but I think it's good that there's a day of awareness for people that don't normally do their part."

Some students believe in more of a year-round approach to environmentalism.

"Why does there have to be a day for it?" said Eric Vanderwalker, a senior electrical engineering major. "People should clean up after themselves everyday. It doesn't really take a lot of effort."