Students celebrate Earth Day with annual bazaar
Two clubs celebrated Earth Day with free giveaways for the VCU community during the third annual Earth Day Community Bazaar in the Park Plaza and Commons Plaza on Tuesday.
Janeal Downs
Staff Writer
Two clubs celebrated Earth Day with free giveaways for the VCU community during the third annual Earth Day Community Bazaar in the Park Plaza and Commons Plaza on Tuesday.
Green Unity and Rams Community Bazaar hosted local vendors and gave out free food and t-shirts during the annual event. About 38 tables were set up, said Ashley Grupenhoff, a sophomore majoring in chemical engineering and a member of the leadership team of Green Unity.
“The main goal is to not only educate about a sustainable way of living with our information tables, but also to support local businesses, local artists and kind of create a face-to-face contact between the buyer and the seller,” Grupenhoff said.
The total cost of the day’s events was around $2,500, said Wyatt Carpenter, a senior environmental studies major and an intern at the Office of Sustainability. Gruppenhoff said the spaces cost about $600 and the t-shirts cost about $450.
Applied mathematics senior, George Pottanat said he enjoyed how the bazaar showed how many students at VCU are capable craftsmen, artists and vendors.
“I really enjoyed it a lot especially to see a lot of the different people,” Pottanat said. “It’s not just for the vendors but it’s also for the students who are out here to show their crafts, their artwork and what they kind of do on the side.”
Though Pottanat said he enjoyed the bazaar and thought it should occur every semester, one student said he was not as impressed.
Psychology major and senior Anthony Muron said he thinks the organizers could have done a better job at promoting sustainability.
Muron said he saw a lot of wasted food, plastic ware that will be thrown away and he thought the nearby trucks were producing a lot of pollution.
“In my opinion Earth day is a celebration of the resources and the gifts we’ve been given by this earth,” Muron said. “So in the future, my opinion would be to make (the bazaar) more sustainable because there’s some unknown ironic consequences that are happening.”
