Wayne State College’s Green Team welcomes all students on its mission to making the campus and community more environmentally friendly each year.
No matter the size of the group, its members work hard to make an impact while at WSC. Laura Dendinger, a business professor and the Green Team advisor, spoke on the inclusivity of the group.
“If people have an interest, I would encourage them to come to a meeting,” Dendinger said. “I do think that people have a stopgap in their head that makes them think it’s only for so and so majors, but it isn’t. Anybody can be interested, and we find that there are people in every major that have an interest in using less and recycling more. And it doesn’t have to just be students, it could be faculty and staff too, which would be a really cool thing because it’s going to take all of us working together to make the largest difference, and we would like to.”
The group meets bi-weekly on Wednesdays to discuss various topics regarding the environment and plan possible events.
“Usually there’s somebody who presents something that they want to share with the other group members,” Dendinger said. “It could be about protecting animals; it could be about protecting parks. They share ideas and resources and then talk about things that we could do together. Sometimes they do some social activities, we’ve done a lot of plant socials in the past where we give away a plant and people come and reuse a container to plant it. We accepted some t-shirt donations, and we are going to make them into dog toys. Lots of people have too many t-shirts and rather than see the go into the landfill, we’d like to see them put to use.”
This winter made it difficult to plan environmental projects, but making a difference doesn’t always need to come from campus events. Anna DeGroot, student president of the WSC Green Team, found other ways to have an impact.
“I think the most effective way to promote sustainability is having these conversations,” DeGroot said. “I feel that’s what we are, just talking about why sustainability matters and building that interest in other people.”
The Green Team is one of many clubs and organizations on campus. Like any club, having a sustainability group can teach students how they can make an impact in other communities in the future.
“Each person brings their own individual commitment to different parts of it,” Dendinger said. “You say Green Team, but that means different things to different people. It can evolve and reconfigure as we move along. My dream would be that people would go and be a part of a green team where they move to after Wayne State. There’s so much to do that it would be great to think that people are continuing their commitment.”
