Meet Our Team
The members of the S.O.D. committee come from a varied background of Cornell organizations all with one goal: make their clubs more sustainable. We want our individual organizations to break from tradition and inspire other organizations to do the same with the help of this website.
Harshita MahendraOutreach CoordinatorHarshi is a senior studying Chemical Engineering with a Secondary Focus in Environmental Engineering. She has worked extensively with Cornell University Sustainable Design to contribute to the project team's collaboration with the Smithsonian Institute to reduce one-time use plastic water bottles, and waste management. Last Fall 2019, she helped research and write a report on best practices for zero-waste events at Smithsonian. Her passion for outreach projects brought her to develop this website with her peers for ENGRC 3350.
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Sebastian Barquin SanchezCreative DirectorSebastian is a junior studying Mechanical Engineering. He is on the Executive Board of Cornell Mundial F.C., a competitive club soccer team that participates in regional and national competitions. His personal passion for sustainability and his creative design skills have allowed him to be incredibly effective in influencing his own team's future apparel and zero-waste event planning. He is excited to share his ideas on a larger platform and connect other student organizations to make a larger stride towards reaching Cornell's sustainability goals through the making of this website.
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Clara FontainePublic relationsClara is a senior studying Electrical and Computer Engineering. She is a leader of Cornell Bhangra and HKN-IEEE dedicated to transforming their years-old traditions to be more sustainably-minded. In addition to minimizing material waste at the Pao annual dance showcase and redefining team swag practices, she has encouraged other teams on the national level to do their part. She decided to team up with her sustainably-motivated peers in ENGRC 3350 to share resources and encourage all Cornell organizations to reflect and grow.
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Why do we Care?
We are committed to student organizations and teams that spend most of their time socializing and preparing for competitions and tournaments. As a result, the leadership have prioritized succeeding in competitions, fostering a close family-like culture, and recruitment and retention over sustainability. This has manifested itself in spending money on new “hype” team swag every year, handing out thousands of slips of paper to students to recruit them, and buying plastic silverware and cups for team parties. Because this has been practiced every year since the start of our memberships of the teams, we’ve never taken the time to rethink how the system should be done.
It deeply concerns us to think about how a continuation of these unsustainable practices would hurt our planet. Every new party we host, we contribute hundreds of scrapped Red Solo cups to the global plastic consumption of 270 million tonnes. Every new t-shirt we buy to wear twice, abandon in the back of our closets, and eventually throw out to become part of over 16 million tonnes of textile waste. Every quartercard we hand out that gets abandoned on a wet sidewalk or thrown away in a freshmen dining hall contributes to a rising global methane production and thus global warming. It is our duty to redefine our priorities, find sustainability resources, take action, and encourage our communities to do the same.
It deeply concerns us to think about how a continuation of these unsustainable practices would hurt our planet. Every new party we host, we contribute hundreds of scrapped Red Solo cups to the global plastic consumption of 270 million tonnes. Every new t-shirt we buy to wear twice, abandon in the back of our closets, and eventually throw out to become part of over 16 million tonnes of textile waste. Every quartercard we hand out that gets abandoned on a wet sidewalk or thrown away in a freshmen dining hall contributes to a rising global methane production and thus global warming. It is our duty to redefine our priorities, find sustainability resources, take action, and encourage our communities to do the same.
Reach out to us!
The world of sustainability is highly dynamic. A new study comes out almost every day detailing and expanding the urgency and scope of our global problem. At the same time, modern solutions are coming out from people devoted to the cause. We have a small number of solutions on this website, but using data from the quiz and from outside research, we hope to expand the possibilities available for Cornell organizations to make our campus more sustainable. For that reason, if you have any ideas on how to create a happier, more sustainable Cornell, please reach out to us!