We had the opportunity to speak with Janine Schmitke, fifth year ChemE student, Chief Officer and founder of ESS Sustainability, as well as Allegra Martel, fourth year ChemE student and founder of the ESS Mug Share Program. We got their take on the struggles they’ve faced trying to start their initiatives, and how they got the confidence to do it.
What advice would you give to other undergraduate students in your position that want to be more involved in sustainability?
Janine: In the engineering faculty I realized that pretty much everyone you talk to about sustainability is receptive to it. So, the advice I would give is to just reach out and talk to people and understand that they’re not going to make fun of you for caring about the planet.
Allegra: I would say to somebody else wanting to get involved in sustainability to just pick a certain aspect that interests you, focus on that, and build up from there. So, let’s say with single use plastic, you can just start by really focusing on bringing your cutlery around. Then maybe you can move on to emission reduction and try to bike or walk to places. Before you know it, you’re combining all those small things that add up to make a big difference. Just start by picking something you want to do and talk about it. Read about it. Learn about it.
What were the most challenging parts of launching your initiatives?
Janine: For me, it was just having the confidence to approach people and talk about my ideas and realizing the words I was saying were important and that people should hear them. Once I stepped past that line and realized everyone who I approached wanted to help me, things started to fall in place. But it was just getting over that initial confidence barrier.
Allegra: I had the same challenge. I would say that just getting past that self-doubt, that little voice in the back of your head that says “But is this really a good idea?”. With the mug share program, the hardest thing was that I had this idea but making it into something concrete that’s user friendly, effective, and actually going to work. A part of that too is just approaching random people for help, but once you start doing that you’ll figure out a way to go from there. So again, just getting through that confidence barrier as you said, Janine, and taking the leap was the hardest part of the whole process for me.
Do you have any tips for people who are trying to get over that confidence barrier, or can you pinpoint a moment where you thought to yourself “OK, I’m going to do this now?”
Allegra: For me it was helpful to talk it out and test the waters, put the idea out there first with people who I knew were not going to be harshly critical of it, like my group of friends. From that, I was able to have those moments where I came up with something that made absolutely no sense and they forewarned me before presenting it to the whole engineering student body. So I would say don’t be afraid to talk it out, people are your best resource when it comes to a new idea.
Janine: I would totally echo that, just talking about it with the people that you feel comfortable with. You slowly build up confidence and you can get your pitch down a little bit and you think “OK, the things I’m saying make sense” and another human can, at the very least, comprehend it.
Going forward, what are your hopes for future engineering students in terms of their contributions to sustainability initiatives? Are there any cool projects you’d like to see in the future?
Janine: Good question. I think I would be excited if ESS Sustainability just stays alive after I’m gone and after you three are gone. It doesn’t really matter what project they’re doing, as long as they’re talking about sustainability with engineering students, getting them excited about everything, and helping to educate them. Other than that, I would love to see a focus on the social side of things and just what I was talking about earlier, consultation and maybe engineering students working outside of just the engineering faculty.
Allegra: Ideally, I would love it if ESS sustainability became just an integral part of the ESS that lives long after we’re done. So if any of you reading this want to volunteer that would be amazing. But I think something that’s obviously close to my heart is the Mug Share program. So I’d love to see that expand across campus. I think maybe even to see solar powered phone chargers in DICE and just stuff where we use our creativity and our technical skills to build some cool things that are also environmentally conscious that would be neat. So, I’d love to see people come in with an idea that we haven’t even thought of and just go for it and make it amazing.
Janine: Everyone has a part in this team. Whatever you want to do, do it. I just want to help.
Thank you for taking the time out of your busy lives to talk to us!
If you’d like to hear the full interview where we talk a little bit more about the interesting reason why eating buffalo is better for the environment than eating cow, what frog hunting has to do with the mug share program, and why bringing two hundred mugs into Lister is a bad idea — check out our podcast
