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Students go green
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by Ashley Ball
Rain pounds Lumpkin Street as umbrella-less students run for shelter. Within minutes, an SUV pulls to the curb to rescue the dripping students from the downpour. They don’t realize that the shallow ditch camouflaged by inconspicuous plants on the side of the road saved them from being stranded at the Student Learning Center, possibly until the rain subsided.
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| The Go Green Alliance sponsored events in October to highlight recycling. Here, Larry Hahn (left) a senior public relations and history major, and Abbey Vandeweile, a senior public relations major, both from Marietta, relax in a pile of Red & Black newspapers headed for the recycling center. Photo by Peter Frey |
Thousands of students pass the Lumpkin Street Rain Gardens every day, yet few understand the extent of their effects on the environment. In the summer of 2002 flooding on Lumpkin Street was a big traffic concern. Athens-Clarke County suggested installing more pipes in the area. But some UGA students, including Nancy Aten (MLA ’03) and Laura England (MS ’03) saw rain gardens as a way to alleviate traffic and improve the water quality of Tanyard Creek.
The rain gardens came together after members of the UGA Students and Educators for Ecological Design and Sustainability (SEEDS) and University architects created a plan for “the longest street edge storm water quality project in the country,” says Kevin Kirsche (BLA ’98), a UGA architect who was then also a master’s student in the College of Environment and Design.
The gardens act as a natural filtration system. When rain hits the street, it picks up toxins and pollutants from the pavement. Now instead of going directly into Tanyard Creek—and the Oconee River—the rainwater flows into a ditch lined with rocks and plants that live off of the water. The plants use some of the water; the rocks strain the rest and keep it moving at a slower pace to minimize erosion.
While Athens-Clarke County paid for the construction of the rain gardens on campus, UGA is responsible for maintenance, making this project a model for town-gown relations.
“The gardens are now being used as a teaching tool for the whole UGA community,” Kirsche says.
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| Students from environmental health sciences collected hundreds of old tennis shoes in December as part of the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe recycling program. Tommy Xanders, a sophomore environmental economics and management major from Cincinnati, collects the shoes from bins at the Ramsey Center. Nike grinds and purifies the shoes into a material that is then used in surfaces such as tennis courts. Photo by Andrew Davis Tucker |
Students often are the driving force for environmental efforts. The Go Green Alliance, created by Professor Lynne Sallot’s public relations students, promotes environmental issues on campus. It is now a part of UGA’s Physical Plant Sustainability Inititative.
During the Alliance’s 8 Days To Go Green, seven organizations held a recycling competition among the three freshman high-rise dorms.
“Fifteen thousand pounds of recyclables were collected in only eight days,” says Caitlin Smyke, a senior public relations major, who took Sallot’s class last semester. “The more people we talked to about the issues, the more they saw it was important and got excited.”
—Ashley Ball is a senior from Alpharetta majoring in journalism.
GET MORE
Info on SEEDS or the Go Green Alliance:
www.uga.edu/seeds and
www.gogreen.uga.edu.
CHECK OUT
Students for Environmental Awareness:
www.uga.edu/sea
UGA Food Services:
www.uga.edu/foodservice/aboutdining/sustainability.html
UGA Recycling Program:
www.ugarecycles.org
Office of Energy Services:
www.uga.edu/energy
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