Students Celebrate Mother Earth

Instead of making trite “yo mama” jokes, students are showing respect for Mother Earth when observing this year’s Earth Day, which took place yesterday.

Around campus this week, student organizations are holding events geared to promoting environmental awareness and the efficient use of nature’s resources.

In front of the Science Center yesterday morning, the Environmental Action Committee (EAC) and the Resource Efficiency Program (REP) held a “Bottled Water Taste Test” to see if there was a noticeable difference in taste between Cambridge tap water and expensive brand-named bottled water.

Students performed poorly, to the jubilation of the EAC and REP student representatives.

“It’s pretty clear people can’t taste the difference between tap and bottled water,” said Zachary C. Arnold ’10, EAC co-chair and Eliot House REP representative. “Tap water ecologically makes the most sense by far.”

A REP publicity e-mail argued that it’s necessary to question whether commercially distributed water tastes better, because bottled water “costs roughly 4,000 times more, requiring 1.5 million barrels of oil, enough to fuel 100,000 cars for a year.”

The water taste test was part of “Love Your Earth Week,” an entire week of campus-wide green activities.

Last night, the Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) served a “breakfast for dinner” menu.

According to the HUDS Web site, breakfast foods are more sustainable because they take less resources to produce.

Pforzheimer House will be screening “An Inconvenient Truth” today, with House Master and Professor of Biological Oceanography James J. McCarthy speaking beforehand and taking questions after.

Each upperclass House is holding activities for Earth Day, such as dishware return drives and environmentally themed stein clubs.

Love Your Earth Week culminates Saturday with a “Charles River Cleanup” in the morning and the afternoon EAC Earth Day Celebration on the MAC Quad, according to REP representative Nicole E. Hughes ’09.

The week’s events might not have an immediate impact, Arnold said, but they aim to raise student awareness about environmental issues.

“We work on the student-to-student level to change habits,” he said.