The Associated Students of Madison Sustainability Committee met Tuesday to plan details for an end-of-the-semester sustainability fair, which would involve various environmental campus groups and a keynote speaker.
Sustainability Committee Chair Colin Higgins said the committee hopes to attract over 300 students and to have approximately 30 student organizations attend the ASM Sustainability Fair April 27.
The committee plans to invite a well-known sustainability speaker from the campus or local community to highlight sustainability in a keynote address at the forum.
“I think it’s also really cool, because we’re focusing on campus stuff, to keep [the speaker] sort of focused locally,” Higgins said.
Higgins added the fair will give the Sustainability Committee an opportunity to collect student input on sustainability issues, which it can then use for planning future campaigns.
“It’ll also be a really cool way to … have [students] think about the actual nitty gritty of creating solutions to these larger campus issues and, hopefully, on a much more long-term, broader scale, get that critical thinking going for … global issues,” he said.
Also at the meeting, the committee voted to endorse a campaign led by REthink Wisconsin to ban disposable plastic bottles from campus buildings.
Higgins said the campaign is “timely” because the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s contract with beverage provider Coca-Cola runs out this year, and if renewed, banning disposable plastic bottles would breach the university and Coca-Cola’s contract.
