Promo found at Campus Verde Green Activities website
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Summer vacation has ended, and for many of us colegiales, it is a sad feeling we carry even on the third week of the semester. With new challenges awaiting for us each year, it is difficult for a student to find time to relax or engage in any non-academic activities during the timeline of a semester. Luckily for us, we have student associations, such as Campus Verde-UPRM, who dedicate themselves to organizing Eco-friendly activities for the UPRM student population. Their fist activity, an EcoCine on Minimalism, was hosted at the Casa EcoSolar, located in the CID building, on Tuesday August 21, 2018.
Casa EcoSolar, picture found on Instagram @problematicshopaholic
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As I parked my car at the CID building, I was amazed by the vivid colors of the Casa EcoSolar and the resources it has available, such as eco-friendly water and solar power system, a garden where they grow their own crops, and facilities to promote and offer workshops on a more nature friendly type of lifestyle. Since this was my first time visiting the Casa EcoSolar, I decided to take a quick look at the facilities and what they offer to the campus.
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From left to right, we have Sofia Lugo-Secretary of Campus Verde, Gabriel Colon-Leader of “Casa EcoSolar,” and Jean Colon-President of Campus Verde
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Sofia Lugo, Campus Verde-UPRM’s current secretary, explained how one of the organization’s objectives is to create awareness of the importance of living in harmony with our planet and ecosystem. Through EcoCine’s activities, Campus Verde wants to “invite the student population to the Casa EcoSolar and in some way, show them alternative lifestyles through the use of movies or documentaries.”  She also pointed out how these Green Activities “are a more entertaining way for students to hang out with their friends and spend time together in our EcoCine activities. When the film we are showing ends, we usually reserve a space for the audience to give us their thoughts and reactions on the film and for them to reflect on the topics discussed in it. At the same time, they would ask themselves if they are doing anything with their lives to make it more sustainable.”
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The event featured the documentary  “Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things,” which illustrates the lifestyle movement of Minimalism, featuring many experts expressing their ideas about the movement, and how it can benefit and change people’s lives. It also presents testimonies of people who engage in minimalism as an alternative to escape the consumerist lifestyle. Two key speakers in the film are Joshua Fields & Ryan Nicodemus, better known as “the minimalists.” They claim that every person has their own way of understanding and representing minimalism in their life. However, what is important is for the person to really think what material possessions represent for them in their lives. In other words, if these possessions have an important and practical use in their lives.
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Joshua Fields & Ryan Nicodemus, picture taken from theminimalists.com
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Lugo mentioned that they chose this documentary as the semester’s first EcoCine because they feel that at the start of the semester, all of us are rushing to buy a lot of back to school supplies when we don’t really need them. As a final thought, Lugo expressed that “As students, we are highly influenced by consumerism when it is time to go back to school. We never really think about recycling the materials we have used in the previous years. Instead, we focus on buying new and expensive school supplies, bags, laptops, and other unnecessary items that we don’t really have a need for.”
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When the documentary ended, a lot of people, like myself, were shocked and intrigued with what they had witnessed in the documentary. One of the major topics of discussion was the audience’s own interpretation of the lifestyle itself, based on the information from the experts and testimonials in the documentary. For example, for some people it represented living in a smaller house with a set amount of items, for others it’s living in a large apartment with only a few items in each room to create a space for peace and self-meditation. Other students were interested in how the documentary talked about how much money we are spending each year on gifts, clothes, technology, and others because we are taught that constantly spending money and buying is the norm. While it is true that not everyone would adopt minimalism as a lifestyle, it’s a worthy topic to educate ourselves on so we can learn different viable ways to combat consumerism.
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Documentary discussion, picture found on Instagram @problematicshopaholic
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Gabriel Colón, leader of the Casa EcoSolar, reflects on the success of the EcoCine as a space were the audience was able to have a constructive conversation about Minimalism and the pros and cons of the lifestyle. He himself stated that he is a minimalist, and commented that minimalism is “basically what you want minimalism to be, as in, the number of objects you own physically or digitally, which material possessions brings you inner peace and satisfaction in your life, and live a full sensation of accomplishment with your own life while living with less.”
The documentary on Minimalism is currently available on Netflix. If this movement interests you or if you are curious to find out what it is, I highly recommend adding it to your watch list. Campus Verde will host more EcoCine during the semester, where they will showcase documentaries and movies that serve to engage in mindful conversations about the different themes these films provide. They plan to offer this event every two weeks, on Tuesday nights starting at 6:30pm. For more information visit their Green Activities event page.