GO GREEN!

The Associated Students, Inc.’s Conservation Commission and the Environmental Science & Policy Club (ESPC) co-hosted Cal State Long Beach’s “Eco-Week” environmental fair on Tuesday and Wednesday, which was carried out under the title “Go Beach, Go Green.”

“The overall goal is to empower students to live sustainably by informing them of alternatives to common consumer choices,” said Nicole Chatterson, the commissioner of the ASI CC and a senior environmental science and policy major.

Factoids, flyers and table displays near Peterson Hall 1 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. caught the attention of intrigued, curious and supportive students and faculty alike.

Information ranged from the informative to startling, with advice on how adopting more eco-friendly practices is not only imperative but can be profitable and, surprisingly, easy.

For example, re-usable grocery bags made of recyclable material were touted, along with the promotion of reusable water bottles and coffee mugs. The former are sold at the University Bookstore and local grocery stores, and Starbucks offers a discount for the use of refillable coffee mugs.

Such efforts show how easy it is to incorporate simple lifestyle habits into your everyday routine, said Christie Pomplun, vice president of the ESPC and a senior environmental science and policy major.

Adopting such positive choices would reduce tons of mostly non-biodegradable waste in landfills, thereby reducing the negative human “footprint” on the environment, Pomplun said.

Also exhibited were the benefits of using recycled printer and notebook paper, a “How Green Is Your Diet?” guide to the personal health, the environmental advantages of shopping at farmers markets, and how buying locally grown foods and organic free-range foods devoid of pesticides, artificial hormones, synthetic fertilizers and modified genetic organisms is beneficial to the environment.

Non-toxic cleaning and personal body-care products were displayed, as well as low-flow shower heads and compact florescent light bulbs for energy and water conservation.

Also present were Long Beach Transit representatives who encouraged a hop aboard the fleet’s low-emission alternative energy and hybrid buses.

Another table sought to raise awareness on the harmful impact of personal and industrial plastic trash and materials on beaches and in oceans. It exposed problems that table organizers said people don’t often consider.

With looks of shock and concern, students saw the skeletal cavities of sea birds packed with ingested bottle caps, shards of disposable plastic water bottles, and other plastics that kill wildlife and pollute the fish that humans ingest.

It was a stark illustration of how “our trash comes right back to us – literally, inside of us,” Chatterson said.

Also promoted were the benefits of recycling materials that people use every day. Many students said they didn’t know that the ASI runs a student-run recycling facility on the north side of campus alongside Atherton Street, near the Parkside Commons residence halls.

“I think what’s going on here is awesome,” said Janna Phillips, a freshman who said she intends to major in music. “My brother and I used to recycle a lot when we were kids. It was fun and the [recycling center] was really close by, which made it easy.”

But Phillips said they stopped recycling as teenagers because they dropped the habit. “But when I saw Al Gore’s documentary, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ it really opened my eyes about how real and serious [the issues are] for all of us,” she said. “But it also showed what a huge difference we can make.”

Perhaps the most popular exhibit was the green-fuel automobile owned by Spencer Brown, a CSULB alumnus and founder of the Earth Friendly Moving Company.

The car runs 100 percent on biodiesel fuel and waste vegetable oil, which “smells like doughnuts,” Brown said. He said it saves money and helps save the planet, too.

Brown’s company is a service that rents durable reusable moving boxes, a product he invented from 100 percent recycled plastic materials. The operation he said helps keep plastic out of landfills, out of the oceans and in a perpetual re-use cycle.

Students perked up when Brown explained how he purchased his biodiesel from a college student who pays his own tuition as a biodiesel fuel distributor.

That entrepreneurial spirit has also caught on with other college students who sublease Brown’s green boxes and take home their own earnings. At the same time, they acquire hands-on business experience and help promote eco-friendly awareness and action.

With his green vehicle as an example, Brown said he believed “edu-tainment” is an effective means to drive home the need to go green.

For more information, contact the ESPC at clubesp.googlepages.com.