On October 28th Sustainable Campus Initiative (SCI) hosted our third annual environmental fair, ECOLOO! ECOLOO is an event where groups, organizations, and businesses from the KW community as well as from on campus come to showcase what their all about and how students on campus can get involved. This year, SCI had nine vendors attend from both on campus groups and community-based organizations.
SCI additionally had four booths, engaging students in our current projects including: how we are progressing towards a Fairtrade Campus Designation, the University of Waterloo Campus Compost team, and an ECO-Life Hacks booth showing students sustainable home-made alternatives to everyday products. Students also had the opportunity to learn about upcoming events and future volunteer opportunities with SCI.
Outside of educational and rewarding interactions with vendors, students had the opportunity to participate in fun games and activities, enjoy some free food from Queen Street Common’s Café, and enter to win awesome sustainable prizes!
This year we also had a Social Entrepreneur pitch competition where four students brought forward their environmental and socially just ideas in front of a panel of three judges that included
Tania Del Matto, Director of GreenHouse at St. Paul’s University College, Jennifer Lynes, Director of the University Of Waterloo’s Environment and Business undergraduate program, and Chris Lolas, current President of the Federation of Students. Congratulations to Richard Yim for winning the competition based on his idea, titled ‘The Landmine Boys’, where he is working together with another student to develop a product to make the determining process safer and more efficient by building a machine to neutralize mines without human supervision.
The event was a huge success, with upwards of 270 students attending throughout the day!
We would like to thank all our vendors, judges, pitch competition contestants, our volunteers who helped run the event, and most importantly the many students who came out and enjoyed the day!