The fight to make UNCW a green campus continued Wednesday night, January 23 with Dogwood Alliance’s fast food packaging kick-off campaign.

“The thought of going green is becoming more and more popular and things can only get bigger [from here],” senior Cliff Dupree said.

Dogwood Alliance, based in Asheville, N.C., is a network of 70 organizations around the Northeast designed to help protect against the dangers of industrial logging, specifically clear-cutting. They work to turn large paper producers and customers away from sourcing their items from endangered forests and towards increasing the use of recycled materials and other environmentally-friendly alternatives.

“Right now we’re focusing on saving the area around the Green Swamp, which is about 30 minutes from the campus,” field event co-organizer Noelle Janka said. “This is a new campaign, and we’re just getting started so it’s really exciting.”

The Green Swamp contains at least 14 different species of insectivorous plants including the venus flytrap and pitcher plants, along with rare animals like the American alligator, the endangered cockaded woodpecker and the fox squirrel.

For this specific cause, protestors are dealing with Yum! Brands, including Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s and A & W. The corporation is currently planning on cutting down the trees in and around the Green Swamp to use them for products such as hamburger wrappers and Coke cups. However, they will first have to get past a band of outraged UNCW students.

“I was one of the first people to hop on this awesome bandwagon,” junior Cliff Dupree said. “And we’ve got a packed house tonight which is more than we could have hoped for.”

During the kick-off meeting, a slideshow was shown, giving students to the opportunity to see pictures of the place they are trying to save.

The ‘grass roots’ group brainstormed ways to get more people interested in the cause and aware of the importance of saving the land. They plan to construct trees made out of trash and line them along Chancellor’s Walk, showing the future depletion of these plants by lessening them as the walk furthers.

The students in the ‘visibility’ group made sure that people around campus stayed updated on the issue through sidewalk chalk, the on-campus media and campus organizations.

Members of ‘community outreach’ spoke about getting the word out to the community through activities such as tours of the endangered swamp, displaying pictures downtown and organizing a park outreach program.

“The main goal is to get brands to see people looking at them in a negative light and that will make them want to change,” Dupree said.

“These companies are not going to change until we make them,” field event co-organizer Ruth Morrison said. “And the cool thing is that we know we can because we’ve done it before.”

Dogwood Alliance won their last two campaigns, reaching collaborative efforts with Staples, Office Max and Office Depot to transition to the use of more recycled and environmentally friendly materials.

“We don’t seek an antagonistic relationship with them,” Morrison said. “We want a collaborative one.

“We always try to engage the companies we’re dealing with before our campaign, but Yum! Food’s response was that they were not about to switch their packaging,” she added.

The goal is to sit down with the targeted company and negotiate with them.

Originally members of Green Corps, co-organizers of the event Noelle Janka and Ruth Morrison are only helping out with this cause in Wilmington for a few more weeks.

“We wanted to give students the opportunity to work with us,” Morrison said. “Afterall, they’re the ones who will carry it forward once Noelle and I are gone.”

As this particular campaign continues, a media event, including a rally and featuring various speakers, will be held to recognize it on February 4 in Wilmington.

“We had the fantastic opportunity of launching our campaign at UNCW,” Morrison said. “And this is just the beginning.”