Student Life

Sustainability Festivals to Take Place on the Medical and Charles River Campuses

Events will include food, games, and giveaways, plus info about sustainability initiatives

The fall semester is in full swing, and so is BU Sustainability, which is hosting two Sustainability Festivals featuring food, prizes, lawn games, resources, and opportunities to engage with student groups and green efforts happening both on and off campus. 

The Medical Campus festival will take place on Talbot Green on Wednesday, September 16 and the Charles River Campus festival will take place on the GSU Plaza on Wednesday, September 23. Both festivals will be held from 11 am to 2 pm. 

“It’s an opportunity for us to celebrate as a university community the idea and concept of sustainability and to highlight and showcase all the different intersections of sustainability,” says Parren Fountain, BU Sustainability engagement manager. “My goal is always to help people to understand the breadth of sustainability and that it touches all areas of life and academic interests and backgrounds.”

The Medical Campus event will include  reps from Student Food Rescue, Boston Cyclists Union, Eastie Farm, and the American Student Dental Association Sustainability Committee, to name a few. The Charles River Campus event will feature roughly 40 tables showcasing student organizations including BU Beekeeping, StuGov Environmental Affairs, and BU Earth & Environment’s Environmental Student Organization. Leaders from  those clubs will be on hand to  talk with students about ways to get involved in developing and promoting green habits and projects.  Both fairs will offer free  snacks like cake pops and kettle corn, bike giveaways, and prizes. 

“Sustainability is for everyone,” says Lisa Tornatore (CAS’02), director of BU Sustainability. “What’s exciting about sustainability on a college campus is that it’s a place where people can think about innovative ways to solve difficult challenges like the climate issue.” 

At the Charles River campus fair, students can enter to win one of several prizes by collecting eight stamps from different tables at the festival. After visiting tables, students return their stamp card to the BU Sustainability tent to enter a giveaway with prizes including a bike, portable hammock, tote bags made from recycled materials, zero waste kits, and gift baskets from Uvida Shop, Boston’s first zero waste store. 

“Enjoy all that there is to offer and maybe grab some swag and a little bit of knowledge along the way,” Tornatore says.

The fall is a particularly important time for students to think about sustainability, she notes. As college students settle back into their dorms, they can accumulate an “enormous” amount of waste. 

According to the state, there are five waste-to-energy facilities in Massachusetts that together burn about half of the solid waste generated in the state. The rest, according to Recycle Smart, a Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection-funded initiative, is either buried in landfills in the state or transported to disposal facilities elsewhere.

One way to mitigate the amount of waste that goes to landfills or incinerators is to divert it elsewhere. 

Waste diversion, Tornatore says, “is a fancy term for ‘recycling,’” but is more inclusive than typical recycling. To divert food waste, you can compost. Instead of throwing away clothing, you can donate to the Goodwill near campus (965 Commonwealth Ave.) or an on-campus organization like Campus Closet, which will be among the student organizations at the festival. 

Andrew Kim, co-vice president of Campus Closet, says the club aims to reduce textile waste on campus and across Boston by organizing clothing swaps. “We make sustainability more fun,” Kim says. “Donating one article of clothing or just taking a piece of clothing from us helps the world in more ways than people think.” 

“Having a robust community on our campuses that’s interested in helping the university and helping the city solve sustainability problems is something that we feel is super important,” Tornatore says.