There’s a new, green organization on campus: the Eco Hawks. The group is an arm of WLUSU, and their goal is to promote and support green initiatives around campus.

According to Reuben DeBoer, coordinator and founder of the Eco Hawks, the whole point is to “make sure that the voice of the students’ green initiatives are followed through to the best of the university’s ability.”

Although the Eco Hawks just started in September and consists of less than a dozen members, they have already started several initiatives on campus.

“We have a lot of people right now that come from areas like Mississauga, Oakville, Hamilton, …cities that have composting [programs],” says DeBoer, “so a lot of people are just blown away by the fact that we don’t have composting at all within the city or the university.”

“As the Eco Hawks,” he continues, “we talked to private and public organizations to see how we can get composting on campus, which we have done actually.”

In addition to this, Sarah Milne, a volunteer, has been working on a proposal for the city to see when composting will be a service offered to the entire city of Brantford. But composting is just the beginning when it comes to some of the plans the Eco Hawks are working towards.

“We hope to have an initiative every month or so, and if we don’t, it’s because we are working on larger issues,” says DeBoer.

An example of a small initiative would be the tire gauge campaign where the Eco Hawks, along with One Change, gave away digital tire gauges to encourage people to keep the air in their tires at an appropriate level. This helps conserve gas and reduce emissions.

Other ideas that are currently being discussed within the Eco Hawks are tree-planting campaigns, planting a community garden and installing geothermal energy-savers in new buildings.

The Eco Hawks are also looking into getting government grants of up to $100,000 to support some of their initiatives.