One billion people worldwide are brought together each year to celebrate an effort to make the world a healthier, safer place: Earth Day. From major corporations to student clubs and organizations, people use April 22 to combat the climate crisis in a variety of ways including nature cleanups and advocacy. However, this effort continues throughout the year for clubs such as Environmental Club and CIRRUS.
Earth Day was first established in 1970 by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, to bring recognition to the deteriorating state of the world. More than 50 years after its creation, many people take the whole week to spread awareness, share ideas on solving the climate crisis, or help out their communities.
From Monday 22 to Friday 26, CIRRUS focused on cleaning up the community, while the Environmental Club focused on spreading awareness on social media and at Westford Academy. Through simple but impactful efforts, WA’s Environmental Club and CIRRUS both both hope to spread awareness for Earth Week.
For example, Members of CIRRUS spend their Tuesdays and Thursdays hiking, camping, overnight backpacking, kayaking, trail cleanups, and even going on goat hikes. Needless to say, whether it is on trails or lakes, the club spends much of its time outdoors.
“We went on the Tom Paul trail, and we picked up trash along the way,” CIRRUS student advisor Anna Guzik said. “We had these big trash bags and we were trying to clean up the trails and we’re thinking of doing more things like that to help the environment.”
The Tom Paul Trail is one of Westford’s most famous trails, spanning about 2.5 miles, it runs from the Town Hall to the Stone Arch Bridge. And while this is CIRRUS’ first time cleaning the trail, it is not their first time cleaning up other areas of Westford.
“We always try to do something good for the environment on Earth Day or at least Earth Week. Last year we picked up trash around the school […] and the amount of trash that’s in the senior parking lot is ridiculous,” CIRRUS advisor Lynn Jones said.
CIRRUS also does a lot of community service outside of Earth Week. The club goes on memorial hikes and replaces faded trail marks for hiking trails. However Earth Week, in particular, gives them the time to be able to spread awareness on how important keeping the earth healthy is.
“Well, it’s important to acknowledge that we live in a beautiful world, and being in the outdoors and embracing that is great,” Guzik said. “It’s nice to just take a break and go out and help the environment clean up”
WA’s Environmental Club, took a more classroom and social-media-focused approach to Earth Week, as they noticed the presence of activists and awareness on social media has increased in recent years. Throughout the week the club posted crosswords and wordles that related to the environment to keep people engaged on their Instagram, @wa_enviromentalclub. The club also had trivia questions that played on the WA morning announcements, a lot of those questions focused on the creation of Earth Week.
The club also continued with their unique idea, Lights Out Lorax on the Monday of Earth Week. When members of the club would bring small stuffed versions of the Lorax into their classes, the classes would have to keep the lights off for the rest of the block.
The main goal behind the Light Out Loraxes was to conserve energy. Since the power of the whole school can not be turned off, the club decided to work with individual classrooms. With three loraxes and five blocks a day, fifteen classrooms went without lights on Monday, April 22.
Environmental club advisor Jennifer Girardi says that the current club officers have greatly improved the club’s focus.
“She [co-president Shailaja Gille] had an immediate impact, like I would say when their crew joined the whole feel of the club changed in a very positive direction,” Girardi said.
Earth Week allows people to have the time to become more environmentally conscious. Whether that is through picking up trash, cleaning trails, making posts on social media, or just having conversations. As the climate crisis continues to be the efforts of CIRRUS and the Environmental Club help to combat that.
Outside of Earth Week, every May, the Environmental Club goes to the Day School and brings projects that help show the fifth graders what their ecological footprint would look like and how they can improve it. They also try to spread as much awareness as they can at WA, through little activities throughout the school year.
“Before I joined I had a lot of motivation, like self motivation to try to reduce my ecological footprint or thrifting and reusing. I never throw anything out. But I feel like having a little group of people that share that passion with me and being able to […] spread awareness about the environment was something that I really wanted to do,” Environmental Club secretary Estella Cui said.
