howitbegan

The History of Earthkeepers at EMU is a long and interesting one, but what is written here is limited to members' knowledge of the matter, which will therefore be completely devoid of any accurate dates, save those from the last year or so.

Legend has it that Earthkeepers was started in the 1970s by students in EMU's business department as a money-making business venture. Their idea was to make money by recycling materials - paper and some plastics - collected from EMU and the surrounding neighborhood; as an added plus, the experience gave them practical entrepreneurial experience. It so happened that they didn't make as much money as they had thought, and the club turned into more of a save the Earth because we care project rather than a save the Earth because it's profitable sort. Interestingly enough, the story says (with some credibility), this EMU student effort laid the early groundwork for what is now the Harrisonburg Recycling Program. Also, unlike in the founding days of Earthkeepers, many of the recycling facts we as a club have found and have been using for raising awareness show that recycling and other durable practices actually can be profitable and currently are for many cities and businesses. Go to our resources page to learn about some of these, or do your own google search

The three little piggies. We biked to a farm a half mile off campus to care for them.

In recent years, our club has taken a more aggressive role in reducing, reusing, recycling, and composting, and has made some other improvements previously not in existence or notably neglected (such as this website). This began in 2003 when we partnered with Pioneer Food Service (the cafe) to compost the excess leftover food each day and began the annual Rubbish Redemption drives. Since then, we've raised several pigs (Sallie Mae, Pork Chop, and Tenderloin were their names) off the cafeteria scraps which we butchered for pork, and we've continued the traditional Foood & Farming Week each year. Go to the page describing our projects.