Time 4 Change Week to promote sustainability for 7th-straight year

JENNA MUNOZ Lantern reporter munoz.171@osu.edu

This story was originally published March 21, 2023.

Students leading Time 4 Change Week, held March 27 to April 2, hope to make environmental sustainability a little easier for Ohio State students.

Time 4 Change Week, originally started in 2016 by student leaders from different sustainability organizations on campus, will be held for its seventh year. The week includes a range of events — such as cleanups, goat yoga and guest speakers. Abby Thiel — president of Time 4 Change and a fourth-year in environment, economy, development and sustainability — said a goal during Time 4 Change Week is to show students how sustainability can intersect through various areas in life.

“The whole point is to encourage the Ohio State University community, and even the greater Columbus community to engage in environmental awareness and community engagement within these spaces,” Thiel said. “Really connecting the environment and sustainability to all of the topics, like a wide variety of both academic and professional disciplines, and really showing ways how the environment and sustainability intersects with all the diversity of disciplines available to us.”

Time 4 Change also hosts events with other student organizations to reach a wider range of students at Ohio State, Anna Rigdon, a third-year in environment, economy, development and sustainability and treasurer, said.

“We just help them to plan their events cen- tered around sustainability in some way, shape, or form and help them put them on during our designated week during the year,” Rigdon said.

Rigdon said as a college student, navigating ways to be environmentally conscious can be difficult when resources, like recycling, are not always provided.

“For example, like one of the events that we have had in the past is a plastic bag drive where you could bring in your old plastic bags in exchange for a reusable shopping bag,” Rigdon said.

Thiel said Time 4 Change hopes to make environmental sustainability accessible for everyone.

“We believe that, like, everyone benefits, everyone benefits from a healthy sustainable community and planet so for us, just making those spaces approachable for all students, and encouraging collective action towards creating more environmentally and socially sustainable communities for us,” Thiel said.

Students interested in attending events that require an RSVP can do so on the Time 4 Change website.