Peace, love & sustainability

The crowd comes for the music, but the 22nd annual JazzReggae Festival will try to leave its audience of about 30,000 with something to take home beyond a ringing in the ears. As one of the largest student-run events in the nation, featuring major artists in jazz, reggae and hip hop, the festival will incorporate environmental awareness, along with peace and love, into its Memorial Day Weekend lineup.

Continuing with a project developed last year, the festival’s sustainability committee will try to make each component of the festival 100 percent sustainable, through innovative ideas for increasing recycling, eco-friendly technology and education on the Intramural Field.

“We will be using solar power and bio-diesel for our main stage in order to take as many steps as we can,” said Adam Benson, a first-year undeclared physical science student, one of this year’s sustainability directors. “It’s an opportunity to educate students and the surrounding community about the issues that are happening today and what people can do about it.”

Not only is the committee pushing for low energy consumption on stage and the use of electric or bio-diesel vehicles, it will advocate recycling and provide clearly marked bins for different materials.

“It’s an attempt to reduce the waste that the festival produces, so that rather than taking all your plastic and paper plates and throwing them into the garbage, it is possible to recycle a lot of these materials,” said Benson.

Hoping to encourage UCLA students to implement healthier environmental practices once the big artists have packed up and the excitement is over is one of the sustainability committee’s major goals.

Keith Wong, a fourth-year geography/environmental studies student said he thinks it is a good idea to promote sustainability at a large-scale venue like the JazzReggae Festival.

“It’s pretty much one of the biggest issues we’re facing in the modern world, and Los Angeles has always seemed to be kind of behind on matters of the environment. There’s definitely a lot more we can do,” said Wong.

Anticipating the fact that many students would like to do more, the festival will educate on even the smallest aspects of sustainability, such as ways for students to implement environmentally friendly practices into their lives.

“I think most people get it in their heads that that if they’re not doing something big, then it’s not really worth doing, but if people stop thinking like that, then there would be a more significant change,” said Wong. “Students can and are indeed making individual changes in their own lifestyles.”

Whether it’s supporting the recently passed Green Initiative Fund or recycling in the dorms, JazzReggae Festival’s high profile allure will highlight ways UCLA has already offered students an opportunity to be more environmental.

Amanda Penn, a second-year undeclared student, thinks people are showing more concern about the environment by wearing TGIF shirts and making sustainability a more visible issue.

“Aside from that, I don’t really hear much about sustainability efforts, so I don’t know if they’re doing a great job getting the word out there, but I think the JazzReggae Fest is certainly a good way to get people to pay attention because they’re going to want to be there anyway to enjoy the music,” Penn said.

But recycling on campus has posed a greater challenge for students who don’t want to carry around their recyclables. Limited resources and minimal knowledge are problematic for students who aren’t apathetic but also aren’t given the tools to live a more “green” lifestyle.

“I think next to every trash can there should be a recycling bin because people would recycle more if it was easier, but people tend to throw things away that could be recyclable just because it’s not convenient,” Penn added.

The festival is also an opportunity to expose UCLA and the surrounding community to issues they can do something about. With its theme of “Peace, Love and Music,” the Festival is a reminder that environmental issues are broader than just the UCLA campus.

“Sustainability is more than just the ecological aspects. It’s also about things such as environmental injustice and the quality of people’s lives as well, because people aren’t going to be motivated to be sustainable when there’s so many other problems in their lives,” Benson said.

The committee also holds that as students make small efforts in their own lives, they also send out a peaceful message that can break the cycle of unsustainable practices and other problems that affect populations.

“Sustainability goes along with the idea of peace and love, because if you’re in a situation of war, besides the obvious aspects of war that cause environmental damage, you’re also drastically changing people’s lives,” Benson said.

“And obviously it’s not perfect or anywhere near that, but we are making improvements and so I’m optimistic,” he added.

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