Former carrot wins award
Last October, some students passing by the fountain at Brady Commons noticed a tall, lanky man holding a coffee can and dressed as a carrot. That man was Adam Saunders. Saunders, who was president of Sustain Mizzou at the time, wore the costume to help r
Published May 5, 2006
Last October, some students passing by the fountain at Brady Commons noticed a tall, lanky man holding a coffee can. He was dressed as a carrot.
That man was Adam Saunders. Saunders, who was the president of Sustain Mizzou at the time, wore the costume to raise money for Local Food for Local People, a project that provides the Central Missouri Food Bank with goods from local farmers.
"If a guy in a carrot costume comes up to you, you're going to stop and listen," Saunders said.
Saunders's dedication to Sustain Mizzou led the group's faculty adviser Jan Weaver to encourage Saunders to apply for the Peter Raven Environmental Leadership Award. Saunders received the award last week.
Weaver said Saunders coordinated several last-minute cleanup projects at MU home football games. She said volunteers went to different locations on campus and collected recyclables left by tailgaters.
"That was a huge time commitment," Weaver said.
Saunders said the group diverted 11 percent of the garbage the tailgaters produced to a recycling center. He said the group's goal is 15 percent.
"In the six games that we did, we recycled 12 tons," Saunders said. "I was directing traffic over the whole thing."
Saunders said Sustain Mizzou will receive additional support next year through several donations. He said the city will provide the group with recycling trucks and volunteers and that Anheuser-Busch will donate recycling bins.
Saunders also said Sustain Mizzou will begin the Tiger Tailgate Recycling project next semester. The group will provide tailgaters at football games with recycling bags and educate them on the merits of recycling, Saunders said. He said he expected the project to succeed because tailgaters tend to be more agreeable than the general population.
"We try to work an educational component into everything we do at Sustain Mizzou," he said.
In addition to the recycling campaign at football games, Saunders coordinated several other campus recycling projects, including the group's participation in Recyclemania, a nationwide initiative designed to raise awareness about recycling.
As part of the initiative, the group placed 8,700 pounds of recyclables on Lowry Mall. The amount of recyclables was based on the amount thrown in the garbage on campus, based on a waste audit from 2003.
"The majority of it is cardboard and paper," Saunders said. "You wouldn't believe how much paper is thrown away on this campus."
Saunders said the group passed out fact sheets and handmade T-shirts at the lecture, trying to connect to representatives from each Greek house, residence hall floor and student organization.
Saunders is a junior statistics and forestry major, and said he plans to attend graduate school after graduation. At graduate school, he will research hardwood and bottomland forestry.
Saunders said he would like to establish a nonprofit organization that works with agricultural communities and local governments to find a way for the land to provide profitable business opportunities while still being ecologically sound.
Saunders turned over his duties as president of Sustain Mizzou to Marybeth Brubaker last month.
Brubaker, who is a former Maneater staff writer and freshman, said Saunders did great things for Sustain Mizzou during his term as president.
"He's been a huge inspiration to me," Brubaker said. "He's just generally a great person."