EcoPledge is a student-led organization that works toward making Boston College a more sustainable campus. EcoPledge educates the BC community about environmental issues by showing films, presenting lectures, and hosting annual celebratory events like Harvestfest and Earth Day.

Through the leadership of EcoPledge members, Boston College has participated annually in RecycleMania, a national intercollegiate recycling competition, and the Better Off Contest, a two-month energy conservation contest among the residential halls. EcoPledge also runs campus-wide campaigns to promote water and energy conservation, and an increase in commingled plastic, paper, and food waste recycling.

EcoPledge members often go beyond the campus, participating in local community clean-ups, national environmental conferences, and hiking and camping outings throughout New England. The group pledges to collaborate with faculty, staff, and fellow students in campaigning for a more sustainable Boston College campus.

Join the EcoPledge Facebook group!

SustainBC is a student/faculty committee dedicated to promoting greater actions towards sustainability on campus. It helps sponsor events and uses its leadership role to enact real change towards sustainability at Boston College. The organization provides great opportunities for students to collaborate with BC administrators and faculty interested in the environment.

Furthermore, SustainBC members have developed a Green Course Checklist, as well as a Green Checklist for Sustainable Events, outlining simple and effective ways to put sustainable practices into action across campus. Want to learn about toxins you may be coming in contact with everyday without even knowing it? Read "Tips for Avoiding Everyday Toxins," created by Laura Hake of SustainBC.

Would you like to learn more about sustainability through your coursework? Have you taken a course, or offered a course, that includes an environmental or sustainability theme? As an educator, are you interested in seeing the incorporation of these themes into the BC curriculum? If you answered yes OR no to any of these questions, please take the online SustainBC Curriculum Survey. In less than 10 minutes, you can help SustainBC learn what's happening and what the BC community wants regarding incorporation of sustainability themes into the curriculum.

Check out SustainBC's Facebook page! To join the email list, contact Laura Hake.

Real Food BC

Real Food BC is a student group on campus that strives for the establishment of a more sustainable food system. It was started as a part of the nationwide Real Food Challenge.

The goal of Real Food BC is to promote the purchasing of food from local, green, humane sources in order to support localized food production and to reduce carbon emissions that result from long-distance food shipments. BC Dining Services have already taken the initial steps towards more sustainable food procurement, and our group wants to help them take greater strides. In collaboration with Real Food BC, BC Dining created Addie's Loft, an organic eatery that offers food from local, sustainable sources. Located on the second floor of Corcoran Commons (Lower), Addie's offers delicious artisan fare, and its walls display photos and posters that provide insight into the sustainable food system.

Since BC is first and foremost an academic institution, Real Food BC also focuses on raising student awareness about the major impact of their food choices. In Spring 2008, we hosted Real Food Week, and we have consistently been active in Harvestfest and Earth Day events. We also took an active role in Green Week (hosted by the Undergraduate Government of BC), during which we provided information at a variety of events and showed the award-winning film The Garden in order to promote sustainable agriculture.

One of our proudest accomplishments is the Boston College Community Garden, an organic garden on BC's Brighton Campus, created in Spring 2008.

• Read the Heights article "Group Brings Garden to BC."
• Read the Final Report: Cultivating Change: The Boston College Community Garden.
• Watch the video "The Boston College Community Garden."

Environmental Law Society

The Boston College Environmental Law Society (ELS) is a community of students, faculty, alumni, and friends who share a social consciousness about important environmental issues. The society offers a variety of unique opportunities for students to become informed and active in the pursuit of a better and healthier environment. To accomplish this, the society organizes an increasingly broad scope of activities that are fun, educational, and service-oriented.

ELS sponsors a variety of opportunities for students to learn about environmental issues and become involved in educational and service-oriented activities. Students can testify at public hearings on environmental issues, work with the environmental justice organization based here at the law school, Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE), and/or do legal research for several non-profit environmental groups.

ELS (along with help from professors and alumni) organizes a speaker panel in the Fall and a six-week course in the Spring. At these seminars, practitioners and academics employed in all types of environmentally related legal professions speak about their career paths, as well as teach mini-seminars on related topics such as environmental law, land use, urban planning, and administrative law.

Additionally, ELS sponsors activities such as fall foliage hikes, canoeing, clean-ups, Earth Day events, and the famous (or, infamous) Winter Weekend getaway at the Sargent Camp in Peterborough, NH.

ELS’s goal is to offer members of the law school community opportunities to learn about environmental issues as well as how to utilize a legal education to make real contributions to the field of environmental law.

For more information, please see the Environmental Law Society web site.