ITHACA, N.Y. – The Ithaca College women's soccer team was recently awarded the "Eco-Blazer" Club Award at the second annual Ithaca College Sustainability Awards that were presented at the IC Sustainability Week in the Pop-Up Pub.
 
The "Eco Blazer" Sustainability Award is presented to a club, team, or organization that has taken on a meaningful sustainability initiative. The Office of Energy Management and Sustainability has been working to expand the food donation efforts on campus to the Terraces dining hall. After working with the managers and chefs from Terraces, they came up with a volunteer run system, where volunteers come into the dining hall three times a week to package meals that go out into the community. It is really important that we are able to recruit volunteers for this, so that there is no extra work put on the dining hall staff, who are already understaffed and overworked.
 
The Ithaca women's soccer team volunteered to help us with the start of this initiative, so for the first three plus weeks of this effort, athletes from the women's soccer team took time out of their busy schedules to volunteer. The team sent out 514 meals to the community and saved around 789 pounds of food from entering the waste stream. These meals are delivered to Tompkins Community Action, to residents in their supportive housing program. It was extremely helpful to rely on them as volunteers as we started this initiative, which has since been very successful throughout the rest of the semester.