Earthfest

Tie-dye. Live music. Drum circle. Inflatable globe. All of this and more was part of the kick-off on Front Campus for Earthfest 2011.

With the initiative of the Environmental Science club, Earthfest was brought to Georgia College five years ago.

“Earthfest was started to be primarily a fun, student-run, on-campus event that promoted environmental awareness to the students,” said senior environmental science major Jeff Brittain.

Although Earthfest was meant to make students and other members of the Milledgeville community more aware of their surrounding environment, fun activities were included to make Earthfest more entertaining and attract more people to the event.

The festival, was held April 16, had numerous activities for the attendees to take part in. Sophomore environmental science major Colin Maldonado helped set up the activities and made sure that there was something everyone could enjoy.

“We were aiming to attract both the Georgia College and the Milledgeville community,” Maldonado said.

“We were happy to see people of all ages come out and participate in the activities. In order to cater to every person, we came up with fun games such as the recycle showdown, hula-hoop contest, a drum circle, coffee sack race, etc. While these activities were going on, we had different environmental organizations from around Milledgeville and Georgia come out and set up a booth.”

The Earthfest kick-off also had local growers and hand-crafted jewelry vendors.  Live music was also part of the event.

The festival was followed by a week of activities including a showing of the documentary “Heat” on Monday, sorting through campus trash on Tuesday, and a Community Environmental Symposium on Thursday.   At the documentary showing, physics professor Hauke Busch briefly described the film and discussed why it is so important for students today to be environmentally conscious.

“It’s important for students to know what’s happening in our environment,” Busch said.

On Tuesday, students sorted through trash gathered from all over campus to see how much of it could be recycled. The students were collecting bags upon bags of recyclable material. One student that was at the waste audit, senior environmental science major Keith Moore, was surprised by how much trash could actually be recycled.

“After only being here for 10 minutes, I can already tell that there’s going to be a lot of things that need to be recycled,” Moore said.

Geography professor Doug Oetter believes that Georgia College students and people all over the world need to become more involved in sustaining the environment.

“We need to learn and appreciate the natural contributions that the earth gives to society,” Oetter said. “We should be looking for ways to incorporate earth awareness into our lives, even if it’s something as simple as recycling.”

The turnout for this year’s Earthfest was good, but Brittain knows it will get more popular with each consecutive year and hopes that Georgia College will continue to host this event.

“Each year we see more involvement from the students which is a sign we’re doing something right,” Brittain said. “Earthfest is an event that sets us (Georgia College) apart from other universities and enhances the meaning of our liberal arts institution.”