UCSD Junior a Standout in Fight for Green Campus

Christine Clark | April 14, 2008

Jessica Wall at a beach cleaning event during last year's Earth Week.

Try going to go a green event on the UC San Diego campus and not finding Jessica Wall. The junior is seemingly omnipresent at tree plantings, beach clean-ups and campus energy conservation competitions.

True to her green character, Wall has been active in organizing this year’s Earth Week and is involved in several sustainability-related activities on campus. Double-majoring in environmental systems and economics, she is a member of many organizations that help promote sustainability, including the One Earth One Justice, the Social and Environmental Sustainability Committee, the Compost Team and the Association of Environmental Professionals.

This is the second year Wall has served as a Green Campus intern and played a prominent role on the Earth Week Planning Committee. As a Green Campus intern, she works with Facilities Management in the implementation of energy-saving projects at UC San Diego by assessing energy usage in office, labs and dining facilities on campus.

For Earth Week, Wall has organized a student tree planting event that will take place at 8:30 a.m., April 23 at the Hopkins and Voigt Drive intersection. She said she received a lot of support from student organizations and believes it will have a successful turnout. “I just want everyone to have fun and realize how easy it is to make the school not only more beautiful, but more sustainable,” she said.

Wall was also instrumental in organizing the 2007 Green Campus Energy Conservation Contest that took place from Jan. 5 to March 5. In the contest, thousands of students from Revelle, Muir and Sixth colleges competed against each other in an energy conservation competition.

Wall planting a tree.

She said there have been tremendous improvements in sustainability efforts at UC San Diego with the implementation of the Environmental Sustainability Initiative and the recent arrival of Sustainability Coordinator, Maggie Souder.

“UC San Diego has a lot of opportunity for students to get involved and make the campus more sustainable,” she said. “I feel like it’s training me so I can make a difference on a larger scale in the future.”

Wall went “green” a long time before terms such as “sustainability” became household names.

“Some of my earliest memories are hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains and just being so entranced by all the different plants and animals,” she said. “Since I was 10 years old, my life goal has been to try to protect the earth to the best of my ability and, hopefully, a career in environmental law will help me make a difference.”

Wall is dedicated to living sustainable lifestyle on a day-to-day basis. “I no longer buy plastic water bottles and I reuse an aluminum bottle instead,” she said. “I recycle religiously and try to conserve energy whenever I can by doing things like switching all my bulbs out to Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs). I try to incorporate sustainability into all of my actions and remember that I can make a difference in helping save the environment.”