On the morning of April 7th, I participated in the Clean Up Columbus event supported by the undergraduate student government (USG) at OSU. I am an exec member of AWOW (Advocates for Women of the World), and we strive to raise awareness of and raise funds to address global women’s issues. So, a group of us from AWOW attended this clean up event both to serve our Columbus community and to earn some funds to support our organization’s global feminist mission. We were given gloves, trash bags, and other supplies, and then assigned a zone to clean up. It took a us the better part of the morning to collect the trash and litter from our assigned zone, ensuring that we were separating recyclables to dispose of them in a recycling bin rather than the dumpster.
This event provided an opportunity for us AWOW members to become more involved in our local environment, as well as to discuss the complexities of the Columbus system of waste disposal. One of our organization committees is titled “Women’s Economic and Environmental Empowerment”, so this topic was of great interest to us. We learned that there are several extremely popular and common plastics that OSU does not recycle, such as red Solo cups and iced drink cups, both of which we unfortunately had to remove from the recycling bag lest we contaminate the recycling. OSU only recycles bottle shaped plastics, which eliminates plastic cutlery, plastic bags, and plastic lids among others. These facts felt staggering, as even though there is so much environmental advocacy on this campus, it doesn’t wholly translate to the systems already in place. Our group felt it unfair that so much of the plastic we had would likely go to landfill, so some of our members offered to take some of them to recycling centers off campus that do take those items. As someone who does try to be sustainable on a daily basis, but is not extremely involved in environmental advocacy, this clean up event was very eye-opening to me.
After the event was over, we had collected two full bags of trash, one full bag for recycling, and several armfuls of recycling for off campus recycling centers. It was a very productive morning, and the zone we were assigned looked drastically different after we finished. It was satisfying work, even though we ran into a lot of smashed glass and juul pods, because just the knowledge that we were doing something that directly benefits the city outside of our campus was very gratifying. AWOW definitely plans to participate in future events similar to this one, as well as continue to put on events that encourage sustainability. We currently have an event planned for April 22nd titled “Sowing the Seeds for Change”, where we plan on setting up a table where people can plant their own flowers in up-cycled plastic yogurt and applesauce cups. This way we can raise funds for WEDO, and organization that supports Women’s Environment and Development organization, as well as find new and creative uses for single-use plastics that are so common in our everyday lives.