Selen Yildiz
Issue date: 9/19/07 Section: Mixed Plate
Does Sodexho’s food make your stomach ache after lunch? Are you interested in hiking and exploring nature on the weekends? Do you enjoy learning about the environment and different ways to protect it? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may want to look into joining the Sierra Club on campus.
With this year marking the Sodexho contract’s expiration, the goal of the Sierra Club is to do research and create campus dining that is “more delicious, sensible and sustainable as a part of the campus-wide recycling pilot project,” according to its official Web site.
The greater project entails that all of campus will adopt a recycling program, but they added the high cost of the bins and maintenance have been a major barrier in this attempt. Nonetheless, members and outsiders alike are welcome to volunteer and are encouraged to contact the club if interested.
The University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Sierra Club was founded in the summer of 2006 by a group of concerned students on campus. The founders were motivated to preserve the natural resources and beauty of our world, while bringing environmental awareness to the campus.
Since then, the club has been involved in many projects on campus and will continue to be this year, with new president Chris Damitio leading the way.
One of the major projects the Sierra Club took on last year was the “I Get Around! Bring Rail to UHM” campaign. Teaming up with ASUH and 2020 Vision (no longer a club on campus), the Sierra Club convinced the City and County of Honolulu to extend the route of the mass transit system to include a stop at the campus.
Another major event, organized by the Sierra Club and sponsored by Youth Service America and the Civil Society Institute, was “Pono Juice for Hawai‘i,” a panel discussion on renewable energy. The goal of the event, which took place in October as part of the chancellor’s Sustainability Week, was to increase the awareness of climate change in the community.
The Sierra Club helped raise some money for solar panels by selling local/organic, bike-powered smoothies and compact fluorescent light bulbs.
The Sierra Club also organized a sustainability fair with vendors, entertainment and public speakers. The fair also had free screenings of “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Who Killed the Electric Car?” The club’s service projects include trips to neighbor islands to restore native Hawaiian forests.
“I think that each of us needs to take more responsibility for the world we live in. I saw the call go out for a president and I asked myself, ‘Is that something I can do?’” said the club’s president, Chris Damitio.
“A friend of mine once said to me, ‘The bad news is that everything is going to hell in a handbasket. The good news is that more of us know about it,’” he said.
*Damitio is a member of the Board of Publications.
Sierra Club Meetings:
Every Thursday at the Energy House, located on upper campus, 5:30 p.m.
Meetings periodically include hiking at 3:30 p.m. and a short meeting or an environmentally conscious movie afterward.
Activities planned this year:
Kayaking, snorkeling, canoeing, surfing excursions and discovering the small islands off O‘ahu.
Sierra Club contact info:
Web site: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~uhmsc/
President: Chris Damitio, uhmsc@hawaii.edu
Facebook group: Sierra Club at UHM.
