With the numerous number of clubs at ILS, the Environmental Club is often overlooked, yet doesn’t deserve the lack of attention it receives.

For these members are not only trying improve the flora of ILS, but they are also trying to educate all the student body, including faculty, and the maintenance staff, about environmental issues occurring around the world, inspiring them all to take action which means they affect a much wider community than most might think.

The Environmental Club really practices how such small steps can point an individual towards the right direction, with additionally the appropriate mindset, which is why both members and moderators of the Environmental Club have been very adamant within the ILS community in properly interpreting the rules of recycling, especially when it is time to throw away one’s plate, at breakfast or lunch.

Blue bins have been added in every classroom all around campus for quite some time now. Yet, just taking a quick peek into these wastepaper baskets it becomes evident that the recycling rules learned all the way back in elementary school, or even before, have completely been eliminated from our memories.

It’s simple really. All one has to recall are the 3R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle. Reducing involves choosing to use things with care, by never going beyond the bare minimum, to reduce the amount of waste generated. Reusing involves the repeated use of items or parts of items which still have usable aspects and have not lost their purpose. Recycling means the use of waste itself as resources.

Coming back to the Environmental Club, it provides many opportunities to gain service hours as well. Some activities club members participate in are weekend beach cleanups, kayak cleanups, and invasive species cleanups in the woods behind campus. The kayak cleanup is the perfect example. Even though the club doesn’t travel across Florida cleaning up every beach, it makes sure to maintain a pristine ILS campus. Doing little things like this teaches the ILS student body some very easy things to do to take care of our campus, and even more importantly, our planet.