Collegiate Times

The Virginia Tech community celebrated green initiatives and raised awareness about future sustainable plans this week in the annual production of Sustainability Week.

Throughout the week, university and Blacksburg groups joined together promote environmental awareness. The events ranged from forum discussions, building tours and assorted workshops to movie watching and campus tree planting.

The first Sustainability Week at Tech was in October 2007, about a month after the university created the new position of an energy and sustainability coordinator. Denny Cochrane is the current sustainability program manager.

At the time, the town of Blacksburg, Tech and the town citizenry environmental group Sustainable Blacksburg established a "green partnership" and designed the event.

"Our goal of having Sustainability Week was to really promote awareness, education and display practical applications," Cochrane said. "We wanted to provide real world examples of what people can do to live more sustainably."

As a result, Sustainability Week 2007 proved successful. Four guest speakers attended, including L. Preston Bryant Jr., the secretary of natural resources for the state of Virginia.

"It really exceeded everybody's expectations, and it got a lot of recognition," Cochrane said.

The event was awarded the Governor's Environmental Excellence Bronze Award.

This year, the focus for Sustainability Week was on the implementation of the Virginia Tech Climate Action Commitment Resolution, which was approved by the Tech Board of Visitors on June 1, 2009.

The resolution outlines 14 main sustainable goals that Tech is working toward achieving in both the short and long terms. As stated by the resolution's first goal, green efforts on campus will work toward establishing Tech as "a leader in campus sustainability."

One of the events this week was a student-led discussion forum to talk about sustainable progress on campus and the plan to implement the resolution.

"The plan is essentially a living document that's designed to help us achieve the 14 points outlined in the resolution," Cochrane said. "It talks about what we as a university can do to work towards those goals."

Another event that took place this week, put on by the SGA, was showing the movie "No Impact Man" at the Lyric. The movie is about a man and his family who take extreme measures to live completely sustainably.

About 175 students attended, and President Charles Steger was there to watch the film and give a short speech.

"Hayley Sink, who is the SGA director of community initiatives, and SGA president Brandon Carroll worked really hard organizing this event and putting it all together," said Nathan Latka, SGA director of green initiatives. "It turned out to be a great success, and we've been getting a lot of positive feedback."

One of the main components of Sustainability Week each year is the fairs that are put on both at Tech and in the town of Blacksburg.

Tech's Sustainability Fair took place in Squires Student Center on Thursday, and the community Sustainability Fair will take place at the farmer's market on Saturday.

At Tech's fair, various groups promoted and raised awareness of their sustainable efforts.

There were presentations and display booths set up with information packets and pamphlets. One of the groups represented was the VT Beyond Coal organization.

Members Lyndsay McKeever and Alex Darr presented the group's goals to fight against coal use and against Appalachian mountaintop removal.

"We have a lot of potential here at Virginia Tech, and there's endless opportunities out there to move beyond our addiction to coal," McKeever said.

The group also does a lot of work with promoting the conversion of the campus power plant to a more green and sustainable energy alternative, such as biomass.

As the years have passed, Sustainability Week has become more of a standard tradition to the university and has attempted to make a more noticeable effect in the general population.

"All students should embrace this week and take something from it to integrate into their everyday life," Latka said.