RACHEL HEAD '14, ECC CHAIR:
My name is Rachel Head and I am the 2012-2013 chair of the Environmental Concerns
Committee.
CONNOR CORLEY '13, ECC VICE CHAIR:
My name is Connor Corley and I’m a senior environmental studies major from Chicago,
Illinois, and I’m one of the vice chairs for the ECC this year.
HEAD:
What the ECC does on campus is that we try ... our main goal is to try and encourage
our peers to be more environmentally-conscious and to join us in those efforts because,
simply, it’s very important in our generation as young environmentalists, we are
a crucial generation for the future of our planet.
CORLEY:
As an environmental studies major, you get to read and research all the things
that are going wrong with the world. Being part of the ECC, it allows us to make
a difference on campus. When we can do stuff to help our Earth, and help our community,
and help each other, then that just makes a really positive influence on our community,
and that makes us feel good about what we do.
NATALIE SKINNER '15, ECC VICE CHAIR:
A couple of years ago, ECC bought a lot of dishes – plates and cups and utensils,
about 200 of each – and now we just rent them out to student organizations, whenever
they’re serving food at their events, it saves a lot of waste from going in the
landfills because we have reusable plates and just wash them after every event.
HEAD:
So, we do a lot of things around campus to promote environmentalism. Once a week,
we have a thing called the Free Store, and it’s set up kind of like a garage sale.
It’s all donations from Hendrix students and you can just come and get stuff for
free. It ties into environmentalism because all that stuff would end up in a landfill.
So, it’s a little something.
So, right now we’re in the Hendrix organic garden, and it’s a little bit overgrown
right now from the summertime, but we’re working on reconstructing it. We’ve got
a few plots going and some sprouts. It’s really exciting because we’re growing our
own food and it’s open for the whole Hendrix community. Students are responsible
for it, so we’re active in the process of planting and in eating, so we get to see
the whole circle of organic sustainable food.
SKINNER:
Another great part of the ECC would have to be the garden, because I’m really
not a gardener at all. I don’t know how to do anything. I’ve never done anything
at my house with my family with gardening, but they’re really accepting of anyone.
All they need is people to pull some weeds and plant some seeds. And you really
learn a lot, and it’s a lot of fun, and you get to know people through the ground
– through common soil, I guess.
HEAD:
So, as you can see, behind me we have a compost pile. We encourage students to
bring their scraps so we can turn the compost, and when it’s ready, we can use it
for the garden. It’s a good way to get rid of food waste, for sure.
When I get together, when we have ECC meetings, there are just so many great
ideas and so much passion behind being environmentally conscious and behind encouraging
our peers to do so. It just makes you feel like you’re not alone and that your generation
has hope.
CORLEY:
Our glass recycling program is one of our favorite programs at the ECC. It’s
been around for a couple of years now, and basically, the city of Conway and Hendrix
College don’t recycle glass and so the ECC has taken it upon themselves to take
care of that for the school and make sure that it gets recycled.
This is where we keep the glass, behind Hulen. Our dorm reps fill up their bins
in the dorms and then bring them back here. Once they’re all full, we bring them
down to the Conway recycling facility. That maybe happens once a week or ever two
weeks. It just depends on when they fill up the bins. We’re capable of filling these
pretty often. We can do a couple thousand pounds of recycling every year.
HEAD:
Our organization is open to the whole campus and we love the student involvement.
The easiest way to get involved is just to holler at me to get on the email list,
so that you can come to our meetings that we have every other week so that you can
help brainstorm and get involved with volunteering at events.