Students, faculty, staff and members of the community came to Penn State DuBois on Monday to celebrate Earth Day. The gym floor at the PAW Center featured numerous educational exhibits and several local organizations and businesses that highlighted their sustainability efforts.
“It’s important to have this event because Earth Day is so much more than recycle, reuse and reduce,” Michele Joseph, information services and resources specialist at the Penn State DuBois campus library said. “The United Nations has developed 17 sustainable development goals to be implemented by 2030. It is an urgent call for action by all countries not just the United States.”
Those goals set out by the United Nations include such things as improving health and education, reducing inequality, affordable and clean energy, no poverty and zero hunger just to name a few. The result for all these goals is to help the planet, and the people living on it, to have peace and prosperity.
All the local organizations in attendance at the event made efforts to work with and help achieve at least one of the sustainable development goals, including the Soul Platter Café doing their part to help end hunger, Anderson Creek Watershed making large efforts towards having clean water for everyone, Solar United Neighbors pushing efforts towards clean energy and Calhoun Farms ensuring sustainable consumption with refilling of hand soap containers and laundry sheets. All these efforts, working together, are helping to make an impact on the sustainability goals set out by the United Nations.
“Environmental education is really important,” Karter Witmer, Penn State DuBois junior and member of the wildlife society, said. “Without environmental education, I feel like the common day and especially like higher education campuses, a lot of those issues kind of go by the wayside. And it’s important to raise awareness on environmental education issues, things like climate change and sustainability in general. So, for me, as a member of the wildlife society is important to be here to help support educating and just promoting it.”
In addition to the presentation that each organization gave on their sustainability efforts, those in attendance got a chance to visit the PA WoodMobile, which was on site just outside the PAW Center. The WoodMobile is a traveling exhibit that provides interactive experiences about Pennsylvania forests, the sustainable forest products industry, how products are made and the threats that are present to our forests today, such as invasive insects, plants and diseases.
Another highlight of the event was the smoothie bike, which gave attendees the opportunity to have a delicious smoothie, but with a unique twist. Those wishing to have a smoothie had to do a bit of work to get it as the blender to mix everything together was not powered by a traditional wall outlet, rather by the user itself. The blender was hooked to a pedal bike that had to be pedaled to make the blender operate. Equipped with all the bells and whistles, or at least a bike bell like you would typically see on a normal riding bike, attendees got the chance to see the fruits of their labors as their smoothie mixed right in front of them while they were pedaling the bike.
This year marked the return of the Earth Day celebration. The event has not been held since 2019 because of restrictions in place during the pandemic.