Earth Day, officially celebrated April 22, came to El Vaquero Plaza this week with the community coming together to celebrate its love of Mother Earth.
GCC participated by distributing information and giveaways from companies and groups such as Whole Foods Market.
The week which kicked off on April 9, was hosted by Project Earth Tomorrow, a club at GCC that held a variety of events for students to take part in. “Who Killed the Electric Car?” and the recent hit documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” were shown on April 9 and 10. “An Inconvenient Truth” was shown again on April 12 in the planetarium.
On April 11 Carolyn Laskowsky, a representative from the Los Angeles Zoo came to lecture students on endangered species and what is currently being done to protect them.
“Who Killed the Electric Car” tells the story behind the GM EV1 electric zero emissions car. “An Inconvenient Truth” is a film that follows former Vice President Al Gore lecture series that touched on the topic of global warming.
The final event on April 12 took place in Plaza Vaquero. Community based groups like Greenpeace and businesses such as Whole Foods Market, set up information booths and distributed information to students on subjects such as global warming, conservation, endangered species, and organic food.
The Glendale Department of Water and Power came to campus with a load of brochures and pamphlets telling students how they could begin to slowly conserve energy and water. “Some suggestions I tell elementary kids are things like take shorter showers and turn off the water while you brush your teeth,” said Herbert Garcia, the public education coordinator.
The members from Greenpeace used the opportunity to try to recruit members and educate GCC students on the pressing issues of the environment. Abigail Smith, from Greenpeace said that Greenpeace’s’ primary power and focus is their people power compared to other associations and groups.
Whole Foods Market had various nutrition bars, bananas, and other food to give away to students along with bags and information. Becky Felicina the marketing specialist of the Glendale branch said, “We have a lot of earth conscious messages to send to the community. We have products that have stories we want to tell.”
Two products that Whole Foods featured to students were preserve toothbrushes and razors. These products are special, Felicina explained, because they are made out of recyclable plastic from objects like yogurt cups.
The students from the Earth Tomorrow club sold organic hot dogs for $3. Nadia Castro, the vice president of the club explained the importance of eating and choosing organic food. Castro said organic food is free of pesticides that often harm people. The toxins found in pesticides can lead to various cancers.
The club also helped to educate students on the various ways that they could change up their lifestyles to better the environment and lower their carbon footprint. There were 15 different suggestions offered to students. Each of them were posted on a different board and lined across the walk way between the library and San Rafael. Emerson Reyes, 28, a student said, “I could probably plant a tree.” He said that he thought it was important for students to understand and know the information to help survive.
Earth Day may be celebrated differently in other schools but students from GCC hopefully gained a better insight to the topics and issues surrounding this day.
“Everything is connected,” Castro said reminding students just how delicate and inter connected the smallest of our actions are.