This week’s events and activities celebrating Earth Day encouraged students to focus on Mother Earth. But Sara Thompson, Salina senior, lives a sustainable lifestyle every week of the year.

Thompson tries to minimize her impact on the environment in her daily activities. In school, she studies civil environmental engineering and environmental studies. On campus, she can be seen wearing vintage clothes with a stainless steel water bottle in tow. To get around town she walks, takes the bus, rides one of her two bikes or, when she has to, she drives.

“Even when she does drive she has a hybrid, which is handy,” said Amy Hoard, Topeka senior and a friend of Thompson’s.

Her conservation efforts extend to mealtime, too.

Thompson is a vegan, which means she doesn’t eat any animal products of any kind. That means no meat, eggs, cheese, milk or any other animal by-product in her canvas grocery bags. Thompson said she chose a vegan diet because she thought it meant she used fewer resources.

“It cuts down on a lot of the resources used to produce our food,” Thompson said. “It takes a phenomenal amount of water and grain to just grow the crop to feed the animals that we would be eating.”

Cooking vegan hasn’t limited the quality of her meals.

Hoard said Thompson was an excellent cook and spent a lot of time maintaining her vegan diet.

“She makes almost all of her food from scratch, which saves a lot of energy and packaging,” Hoard said.

Thompson said that though it was important for her to recycle all that she could, she said reusing materials so that new things didn’t need to be produced was equally important.

“People in the U.S. consume so much when we don’t really need to, so I feel like that’s really not equitable at all in terms of a global scale,” Thompson said.

Thompson also doesn’t buy chemical cleaning products, but instead cleans with vinegar, baking soda and hot water.

Thompson’s friend Sara Shannon, Ottawa senior, said Thompson was good about cutting down her use of materials.

“Living green isn’t just about buying certain products. It’s about cutting down your consumption,” Shannon said. “It’s something that you’re not doing just for yourself when you’re doing it. I think it’s living by example.”

Thompson said she didn’t try to impose her lifestyle on other people, but that she does support education about sustainable-living issues.

“We only have one earth and one environment, and I think everyone should make an effort to preserve it,” Thompson said.

— — Edited by Sonya English