Just as MIT's environmental awareness and positive initiatives have been growing, our observation of Earth Day also has expanded--into a week of activities this year.
Earth Week at MIT will begin on Wednesday, April 17 with the showing of two environmentally focused movies, "Ferngully: The Last Rainforest" and "The Pelican Brief" at 7 p.m. in Room 10-250. The next evening in the same room, Professor Stephen Meyer of political science will present a visual history of United States environmentalism, using art work and photographs to illustrate the patterns of American thinking about the environment, beginning at 7 p.m.
Beginning at 10 a.m. on Friday, activities will include a plant giveaway, bicycle repair shop and "Living Green at MIT" workshops, all sponsored by the student groups Share a Vital Earth (SAVE) and Students for Global Sustainability (SGS) on Kresge Oval and the Student Center steps.
Other MIT environmental groups such as the Environmental Programs Task Force (EPTF) and the Environmental, Health and Safety Office also will have information tables at the event. In addition, folk singer David Rovics will perform at 4 p.m. The concert is sponsored by the Graduate Student Council, SAVE and SGS. All activities are free and open to the MIT community.
On Saturday, April 20, community members are invited to participate in the annual Charles River Earth Day Cleanup. Volunteers can meet at 9 a.m. on the Student Center steps. The group will walk to the Boston University boathouse to pick up trash bags and equipment and then begin to clean up the banks of the river. For more information or to volunteer, contact Dan Feldman at dfeldman@mit.edu.
The week of April 22 has been dubbed "Clean Your Files Week" as a way to encourage community members to get organized by spending an hour (or more, if possible) cleaning out some old files and recycling all that unneeded paper in MIT's paper recycling bins. Good candidates for recycling are old, no-longer-needed documents, early drafts of completed reports and old periodicals. The result will be neater filing cabinets and possibly even unearthing some buried treasure, like useful articles that were filed and forgotten.
A Recycled Products Mini-Vendor Fair will take place on Wednesday, April 24 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Lobby 13, sponsored by the Procurement Office, EPTF and Office Depot. Vendors will offer presentations and free samples and of recycled products. Snacks, prizes and raffle tickets for special items will be available.
For more information about any of the Earth Week activities, send e-mail to be-green@mit.edu.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 10, 2002.
