The Office of Sustainability encouraged students to be conscious of the environment at an event last Thursday night entitled Defining Sustainability.

Numerous student groups participated in Defining Sustainability, held in the Danforth University Center, to showcase their varying interpretations of sustainability. The program also featured an open mic portion and presentations by members of a Washington University staff panel.

The event was intended to broaden the school’s sustainability effort, said junior Rachel Binstock, the SU executive adviser for sustainability.

“People have to own it; people have to take ownership of a community or a movement,” she said. “[The goal is] facilitating a culture of sustainability.”

Binstock invited student groups that displayed economic, environmental, artistic, political or social sustainability to table at the event. She said she hoped the diverse selection of groups would encourage students to get involved in sustainability efforts on campus.

“I hope that students…learn new ways that they can be a part of the solution,” Birnstock said.

The range of groups at the event was designed to bring many differing ideas of sustainability into play.

Many of the groups at the event offered opportunities for students to get involved with sustainability ventures on campus.

The Student Sustainability Fund and Engineers Without Borders (EWB) tabled at the event to help students get involved with their projects, or start their own.

An EWB project currently underway involves helping Ethiopians sustain their short water supply.

“[We] focus on providing tools to individuals and groups so that they can kind of be self-sustaining,” Cory Flanagin, a member of the EWB-Wash U., said. “We’re teaching them a technology or process, and they can take it on their own and go forward with it.”

Other groups, while committed to environmentalism, noted that their sustainability efforts were stronger in other areas.

“I think our major thing is that we’re culturally sustainable by highlighting the diversity that we have,” said freshman Reuben Riggs, a member of the multicultural group Mixed. “We create a more unified society that can move forward because we recognize each others’ differences.”

While no immediate plans are in the works, Binstock said she hopes the Office of Sustainability will plan follow-ups to the event.