By Shanice Davis

Features Assistant

Last Fall, friends Alex Caratti and Danny Geiszler created the CSUSM Sustainability Club in order to help CSUSM be a more sustainable campus.

With the Sustainability Club being fairly new to CSUSM, not many students are aware of their overall objective for the campus. However, CSUSM is no stranger to the idea of being eco-friendly. But the Sustainability Club would like to take it a step further, and not have being sustainable something everyone only does while on campus, but for it to become a way of life for fellow Cougars.

Throughout the community, the Sustainability Club strives to educate people on the importance of being green.

“We focus our time on the educational point of it and we do some active stuff like tabling events,” Sustainability Club President, Alex Caratti, said. “Last semester our first event was the Kill the Cup campaign, which was a campaign that raises awareness on reusable cup usage and how it’s better than disposable cups.”

For the months of March and April, the club has events lined up leading to the greenest day of the year, Earth Day. On March 14, there’s Super STEM Saturday, Discover CSUSM on April 11, Kick Butt on April 17 and Earth Day on April 22.

As the Sustainability Club is a newfound member to the array of organizations offered on campus, both President Caratti and Vice President Geiszler say they are aware of the struggles that come with new organizations getting their name out.

“Kill the Cup was a big accomplishment, it was really nice seeing the recognition, a lot of people recognized us through The Cougar Chronicle, so thank you!” Danny Geiszler said. “But it was really nice seeing people recognize what we were trying to do and the fact that they cared enough about it to actually participate in it. And I feel like we did make a difference because I’ve personally seen a dozen of my friends stop using disposable cups and start using reusable cups, so that’s an accomplishment and it actually encouraged me to start using reusable items.”

Geiszler and Caratti also spoke about what motivated them to start the club.

“Sustainability has been something I’ve always been passionate about, I’ve just never really had an opportunity to share that passion with anyone else, so Alex really gave me that avenue to share that,” he said.

“For me personally, one of my passions in life is sustainability and wanting to do work in a career that involves sustainability,” Caratti said. “Part of my passion manifests in teaching and educating people how to be more sustainable, so I saw the club as a great opportunity to do that with the support from the campus. It could help educate our generation about how to be more sustainable.”