By Jack Haslett
Business, art, nature and community intersected in the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden on April 18 as the 2024 Green Generation Showcase displayed Long Beach State student and community organization designs to sustain and protect Long Beach’s environment.
04/18/2024 - Long Beach, Calif: Guide map for the event that could be found at the entrance. Every part of the Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden was used for the Showcase. Photo credit: Jack Haslett
According to Holli Fajack, sustainability manager for CSULB and head organizer of the event, over 260 students across a mix of 90 individual and group projects participated in this year’s showcase.
The showcase has grown into a headliner event for Earth Month at Long Beach State, featuring exhibits from students, faculty and the surrounding community.
Students from any major could participate and projects from previous semesters were eligible for entry.
“All the hard work that we put in, just seeing it here all printed out is really cool,” said Chelsea Garcia, a student who submitted a project in the Business or Marketing Solutions category. “It took us a long time to find all the information and even design it, so it’s just really great seeing it out here.”
04/18/2024 - Long Beach, Calif: Chelsea Garcia in front of her group project, Plastics Unwrapped: Navigating Our Way Out of Pollution, her project submitted in the Business and Marketing Solution(s) category. Photo credit: Jack Haslett
Garcia said the project was originally done for her Marketing 405: Sustainability and Green Marketing class and submitting it to the Green Generation Showcase was part of the class project.
Attendees were greeted with project displays like Garcia’s upon entry.
Submissions ranged from proposals on walkable cities and government climate policy to art projects expressing interpretive messages about the environment.
Entries in the Technology and Design/Concept categories proposed innovations like seaweed-derived plastics and various concepts for reducing and repurposing food waste.
The varying categories encompass a wide variety of disciplines and areas of study and highlight the event’s message that the environment can affect or be affected by anything.
“Our message is that sustainability is and should be part of what everybody does. It’s not part of one niche of environmental studies or engineering,” Fajack said.
According to Fajack, a key element to the growth of the event has been the introduction of sponsors for funding.
While the university’s President’s Commission on Sustainability provides funding for the showcase, the event’s capacity and catering at its current scale are made possible through the support of sponsors like Edison International and, more recently, the Port of Long Beach.
The event also featured a table for campus and community partners, offering attendees valuable opportunities to explore volunteer and internship positions in environmental sustainability
04/18/2024 - Long Beach, Calif: Many tables, including Long Beach Utilities' presentation on water conservation, included giveaways. Photo credit: Jack Haslett
Groups at the event ranged from Long Beach Utilities promoting water-saving measures to Trash Talkers, a CSULB-based program that teaches proper recycling and Long Beach Beekeepers who promote their urban beekeeping organization.
According to Long Beach Sustainability Specialist Jason Gallup, the showcase attracts people who are already conservation-minded and eager to share their proposals.
“We love being here because this is our target audience,” Gallup said. “These are the people that would want to engage … and come out into the community and help us do Citizen Science and plant trees and do all that stuff we’re engaged in.”
