On Tuesday, San José State came together to celebrate its 55th Annual Earth Day Celebration.
“Earth Day: Our Power, Our Planet” was hosted by the Environmental Resource Center and several student and local community organizations.
Sprawled through Tower Lawn included vendors, guest speakers and a sustainable fashion show.
Armani Pallais, an environmental studies student, is a member of the Environmental Resource Center and volunteered at the event.
“I used to go to a different university and we never did anything like this before,” Pallais said. “It’s really nice actually.”
The roots of Earth Day run deep at SJSU, with alumnus Gaylord Nelson, being a principal founder of the establishment of Earth Day in 1971, according to SJSU’s Office of Sustainability.
Then on Feb. 24, 1970 students called for the end of internal combustion in vehicles by burying a 1970 Ford Maverick on campus, according to the same source.
Nassim Nouri, Santa Clara County Green Party of California councilmember, has noticed that young people understand the effect that this issue has on their lives.
Nouri’s position is in charge of organizing and coordinating the Green Party of California events at the Santa Clara County level, according to the Green Party of California website.
“We find that young people are not just more enthusiastic about it,” Nouri said. “They are starting to realize the impact that these issues, policies can make in their entire life.”
The Green Party is a progressive political party that promotes environmentalism, nonviolence and other social justice issues, according to The Library of Congress.
When President Donald J. Trump took office in January, a series of executive orders came out to dismantle climate action in the United States, according to a Tuesday ABCNews article.
Malvika Malhotra, a fourth-year environmental studies student and director for the Environmental Resource Center, saw a peak in student interest.
“I think people (are) being interested in sustainable fashion, activism and how some current ongoing events going on in the world (are) related to climate change, environmentalism and sustainability,” Malhotra said.
Sustainable fashion stemmed from the slow fashion movement that began in the 1960s, according to a 2016 research article from the Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management.
The slow fashion movement centers on sustainability values such as limiting environmental destruction and good working conditions, according to the same article.
One of the organizations tabling and educating students on sustainable fashion choices was San José Clothing Swap, a mutual aid which is a part of the San José Peace & Justice Center that facilitates the community to exchange clothes for free.
Maya Bhattacharya, who works for San José Clothing Swap, feels that despite the increase of interest in swaps and thrifting, there is still a lot of fast-fashion production.
“If students can get into the mindset of swapping first or thrift first before buying something new,” Bhattacharya said. “I think that’s the main thing, that whole mind shift.”
Unlike the slow fashion movement, fast fashion was coined in the 1990s and refers to cheaply and mass-produced clothing garments, according to a Jan. 20 article from Earth.Org.
Fast fashion accounts for 10% of the total global carbon emissions, according to the same source.
“We consider education an investment in the future of our society, so all these policies affect the students in not just San José State University, but everywhere,” she said.
