Eco Club held its inaugural Sustainability Summit in the Coppell High School Auditorium at 6 p.m. on Wednesday. The Summit aimed to spread awareness and initiate change in Coppell’s community on issues relating to plastic usage and environmental sustainability.
Organized and led by junior Eco Club officer Ashia Agarwal, the Summit had three target audiences: Coppell City Council, Coppell ISD Board of Trustees and adults in the community. The idea was created last April, and rigorous planning began in November. The summit opened with the presentation of the film The Story of Plastic, created by StoryOfPlastic.org.
“I really wanted to showcase a film because it’s a more meaningful way of getting an idea out there, with real life footage, and then combining that with environmentalism,” Agarwal said.
The film itself is sponsored by the Meaningful Movies Project, which arranges showings of films to the public. The film tells the story of mass production of single-use plastics and how it has created a global environmental crisis.
“Our summit is unique because it is students running the event,” Eco Club sophomore Adhria Pulasseri said. “We have a student perspective that will convince younger generations to listen too.”
After the film, a panel with various speakers in which solutions and community observations related to plastic were discussed. The panel included panelists in addition to Agarwal, such as Summit K-12 professional developmental strategy consultant Dr. Linda Cook, Biodiversity Education Center recreation supervisor Jonathan Ward and Eco Club senior president Tanya Nikam. One of the main topics was addressing the possible effects of herd mentality.
“If we take herd mentality’s infectiousness onto an environmentalist attitude to make an eco-conscious action, such as on the city scale, we can inspire other cities as well,” Agarwal said. “They see that Coppell took this action and want to implement it as well, expanding environmentalism rapidly.”
Dallas Sierra Club was another sponsor of the event, an organization that focuses on environmental justice and connecting communities with their environment. The event concluded with the club providing attendees with a meal including compostable utensils, plates and reusable water bottles.
“Our goal for this first summit was bringing people together to decide what could be our call to action,” Eco Club sponsor Jodie Deinhammer said. “It’s to open the line of discussion and have conversations around it, to see who’s interested in making a change, and find what it is that we can do.”
Eco Club plans to continue the summit on a broader scale in the fall, expanding into other cities such as Carrollton, Irving and Dallas with the support of Dallas Sierra Club.
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