Blackburn’s sustainability club has been doing some incredible work on campus, and it shows. Kayla Lammy, the president of the club, stated, “The purpose of Sustainability Club is to promote sustainable activities on campus/in the community through events and club actions.”
Some amazing things that the club has done over the past three years is installed water efficient shower heads in the dorms, installed a new water bottle refill station in DCC, Assisted physical plant with planting trees on campus, started their social media accounts, adopted a highway in Carlinville and they are currently working on a free menstrual cup campaign to cut back on menstrual product waste.
However, the sustainability club is not stopping there. Some future projects that they are working on are creating a vegetable garden on campus between DCC and Jewell and getting compost bins set up for the campus. The garden can be used for a variety of things, such as educational purposes, donating food to the dining hall and many more things.
The way that the club comes up with these great ideas is by searching online for ideas, what ideas would benefit the campus, what students would be interested in doing and project ideas proposed by members of the club. The sustainability club currently has fifteen members with Dr. Bray as the club advisor. These members are Kayla Lammy (President), Bailey Lentz (Vice President), Courtney Ohlrogge (Treasurer), Lexi Hoffman (graphic design helper), Jaquelyn Rose (graphic designer helper), Lane Satchwell, Kelsey Jachino, Emily Benning, Dade Bradley, Katie Nix, Kaleb Mitchum, Holly Luecheck, Jameela Brown, Quentin Parmenter and Morgan Zobrist.
The sustainability club recommends many ways for the Blackburn community to become more environmentally friendly which include using reusable water bottles, using the green to-go containers from ding, supporting sustainable brands, using reusable K-cups if you use a Keruig, recycle, and many other things that will help the campus as a whole become more sustainable. Lammy stated, “Being sustainable starts with yourself! Making small changes in your life can have a great impact.” While becoming more sustainable will take effort, Lammy also stated, “Being more sustainable does require a little bit of conscious effort at first, but once you learn and get used to it, it becomes second nature! We challenge everyone to make one change/take one action in their lives to become more sustainable!”
The best way for the Blackburn community to support the sustainability club is to show interest in the things that the club is doing and participating in their events.