The University of Wisconsin-Superior Sustainability Club held events from April 17 to April 21 to celebrate Earth Week. A few of the events included a nature walk, environmental expo tabling, and a campus cleanup. The campus cleanup was on Friday, April 21, one day before Earth Day.

The Sustainability Club is a student-run organization that looks to make the UW-Superior campus more sustainable and encourage more green thinking. “The Sustainability Club is important to UWS because it creates environmental and thus social awareness regarding the use of plastic, fashion, and recycling as a whole,” said Daniela Castiblanco Diaz, a UW-Superior student and social media coordinator for the Sustainability Club.

The Sustainability Club started in 2019 and looks to grow as a club in the future. The Sustainability Club puts together projects to help create a more environmentally friendly campus. “We use our budget to try and create some projects such as reusable container project for the free store so we can make overall campus more sustainable and also promote green thinking,” said Lucas Palomino, the co-president of the Sustainability Club.

The UW-Superior Sustainability Club creates projects for the campus with their budget. However, the club is still looking for more support from the UW-System. “We are the only campus in the UW system which doesn’t have office of sustainability,” said Sakib Mahmud an associate professor at UW-Superior and faculty advisor of the Sustainability Club. Without an office of sustainability, UW-Superior students that are part of the Sustainability Club must take the lead to make the campus more sustainable.

“The club needs more visibility and economic support from UW-System. UWS is the only campus that does not have a Sustainability department or office among the other UW campuses. This university does not obtain a budget or funds from the government or from other institutions than the budget for the student organizations,” said Castiblanco Diaz. Despite the lack of a sustainability office on campus, the Suitability Club won Program of the Year at the Yellowjacket Student Excellence Award ceremony on April 26.

Meetings for the Sustainability Club are on Fridays from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. in room 203 in the Yellowjacket Union.