Earth Week and Beyond

Scottsdale Community College is celebrating Earth Week with various events throughout the week, beginning with the Dumpster Dive, Wednesday on the east patio of the Student Center from 8 am to 2 pm.

Thomas Williams, SCC's chair of the Sustainability Committee, said that when people recycle, it is a simple way to improve the environment. However, when it is not effortless for people, they often do not do it. The Dumpster Dive will help students get an idea of how much of our waste can be recycled. Instead it is often tossed away in the name of convenience.

Thursday will focus on sustaining one's mental wellness and body. There will be yoga and Pilates classes by the pond in the Center Green of the college from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jean Rigden, education coordinator for the Center for Native and Urban Wildlife and a teacher of biology at SCC, says that spending time with nature serves as a stress relief technique.

Coinciding with these events there will be presentations by the Substance Abuse Committee in the Turquoise Room from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Topics will include sustaining mental wellness, consequences of meth and prescription drugs and a short film on suicide prevention.

Friday, Arbor Day, will be devoted to planting native trees around campus. Interested students should meet on the east patio of the Student Center.

There are 52 weeks in the year, and only one of those weeks is dubbed Earth Week. This means that there are 51 remaining weeks where Mother Earth desperately needs assistance.

"Ride your bike to school! It's fun, it's healthy and it saves money and energy," said David Fasel, a student at SCC who also works with CNUW gathering biological research. "We live in a great city for being able to bicycle almost year-round."

Rigden suggests that students do simple acts such as using cloth bags at the grocery store, refilling water bottles, never littering and driving cars with environmentally friendly gas mileages.

"Nobody's going to try to save anything they don't know anything about," says Rigden. This is why Rigden continues to work with CNUW in an effort to inform students of all ages about Arizona's unique biodiversity in hopes that it will ignite an appreciation for nature in today's youth.