In honor of Earth Day, Trinity’s Sustainability Committee hosted an event displaying different conservation efforts from students, faculty and staff on April 22. Around 15 students and staff attended the event, and students and faculty presented five posters about their conservation projects on Trinity’s campus.
Following the project display, Christine Drennon, associate professor of sociology and anthropology, hosted a panel discussion featuring Richard Reed, professor emeritus and Trinity’s former director of environmental studies, and Leslie Bleamaster, director of operations for the D.R. Semmes School of Science.
Meghan Bauman, Trinity’s registered dietitian and Sustainability Committee member, said this event, along with the other Earth Week events the sustainability committee planned, served to raise awareness of Trinity’s sustainability efforts. These presentations in particular served to highlight student efforts as well as her own project, “Food Waste on Campus: Challenges, Impacts, and Opportunities for Change.”
Bauman’s poster displayed statistics about food waste at Trinity and in the U.S. nationally. According to the poster, Americans generated 70 million tons of surplus food in 2024, amounting to $380 billion, with about 85% ending up in landfills and incinerators.
For Trinity, Bauman included Chartwells’s report on food waste, during which Chartwells conducted “Weigh the Waste” tabling events monthly in Mabee Dining Hall during the 2025-2026 school year. According to the report, Chartwells collected 70 pounds of food waste from students, faculty and staff between September 2025 and February 2026.
The final section of Bauman’s project explained opportunities to reduce food waste at Trinity, such as initiatives for students to eat smaller portions, using to-go boxes or initiatives for the dining team like using the garden behind Mabee and composting.
Other projects included: “Sustainability at Trinity” by “Business Sustainability in Action” students Isabella Villena, senior international business major, Odi Aneji, senior international relations and political science double-major, Luke Whitfill, senior finance major, John Ferretti, senior finance major, and Eva Tatum, junior environmental studies and business double-major, as well as projects from students and faculty in the department of Earth and environmental geosciences, such as:
“3D Photogrammetric Analysis of a Fault Tip Damage Zone” by Isabella Rueda, senior geosciences major, and Benjamin Surpless, professor of geosciences
“3D Numerical Modeling of Normal Fault Damage Zone Development” by JP Palmer, senior geosciences major, and Surpless
“Modern Problems Require Ancient Lakes: Chronology & Chemistry” by Emma Garrett and Luke Moreton, senior geosciences majors; Graham Edwards, assistant professor of geosciences; Gavin Piccione, Brown University geoscience professor; David Jones, Amherst College professor of geology; and Clara Danhof, Amherst College alum.
According to Bauman, the Sustainability Committee will continue hosting this event annually.
“We’re super excited to start this inaugural tradition this year,” Bauman said. “Then going forward, making it bigger and better and expanding on the groups that we have involved, bringing more people into the fold to educate everyone a little bit more about sustainability.”
During the event’s panel section, Reed, Bleamaster and Drennon discussed Trinity’s conservation projects — and the students and faculty who led them — dating back to the 1970s. Reed noted that in the 1970s, Trinity had the largest solar energy plant in the country. He said he encourages students to contact administration for conservation or sustainability concerns they may have on campus.
“This is an administration that really, really wants you to be happy and they will really listen,” Reed said. “In many ways, they will give you the ability to do anything as long as it doesn’t cost a lot of money. There’s a lot of room to do stuff on your own, so I would really recommend that students push the administration.”
