By hosting their first month of the Buy Nothing program, Students Against Violating the Earth (SAVE) hopes to make sustainability more simple and accessible for students and staff. The initiative began in April, coinciding with Earth Day.
According to SAVE co-advisor Kim Wilson, the new Buy Nothing program is a way to reduce waste in the school community.
“It’s an initiative to allow people to donate things, and keep them in the community to be reused,” Wilson said.
SAVE officer Quincy Canavan said this is “a way to reuse old stuff that you don’t want anymore, and try to give it a new life.”
SAVE officer Sophie Dubois said the new initiative will be a resource available to anyone in the school.
“[We are] bringing [the donations] in and letting our school community, whether that be teachers, other staff or students, come in and take those without having to pay,” Dubois said. “[We are] taking away that barrier of driving, as well.”
Canavan said the program will run on a monthly basis.
“Every Thursday, we’re going to look through and try to consolidate everything [the donations] into an area,” Canavan said, “and then, once a month, we’ll have it out during lunches for anybody to come and take whatever they want.”
SAVE co-advisor Joshua Lawrence said lowering landfill use is a key part of the new initiative, as well as “giving someone an opportunity to have something they didn’t originally have.”
Wilson said the program also aims “to make it easy to do the right thing for the Earth.”
“Everybody wants to help the environment, but if it’s not easy, they’re not going to do it,” Wilson said. “So, this is just another easy way for people to help out.”
For Dubois, the initiative reinforces some goals of the club.
“The main purpose of the program is to emphasize the reduce and reuse part of the three R’s that we’ve all heard,” Dubois said. “Everyone talks about recycle, but it’s really those two main things that can help out.”
According to Wilson, SAVE is using April as a trial run to see if they should continue the new program.
“We’re going to see how it goes this month, and then decide if it’s worthwhile to do again this year, and the frequency with which we do it,” Wilson said.
Dubois said that how this first month works out will reflect how the program should proceed. “After this trial run, we really want to expand the program and make it something bigger, and something that is more common for students to participate in,” Dubois said.
For Lawrence, having the trial run will give SAVE the chance to adjust and refine the new program.
“It’s just going to be a freestyle, and sometimes freestyles are nice, because you’re not expecting anything, so you’re not going to be upset if it doesn’t go right,” Lawrence said. “Then if it does work out, you have something new to work with, and it’ll help out the school.”