The lead singer of local band Bend Sinister lent his talents to SFU’s newest campaign, the Zero Waste Initiative, which is looking to greatly reduce the university’s environmental footprint by 2015.
Dan Moxon, an SFU alumni and singer from Bend Sinister, joined up with SFU Creative Services in early January to make a music video that explains the initiative to students. The video features Moxon singing about how to further separate waste into four new recycling streams: landfill waste, compostables, paper, and recyclables.
The Zero Waste Initiative is a joint project between the Sustainability Office and Facilities Services that aims to double the amount of waste SFU will divert from landfills over the next year by encouraging recycling and composting alternatives.
“2014 is the best possible time to implement this program because it’s now, and now is far better than later,” Rachel Telling told The Peak. Telling, the Zero Waste coordinator, explained that Metro Vancouver is implementing zero waste goals, which include a ban on organic wastes from its landfills by 2015.
“SFU is leading in this changeover . . . so members of our community not only have time to become familiar with it, but so they can themselves be leaders in this major change in how waste is managed in BC,” Telling explained.
However, with a new system comes the challenge of making recycling exciting for SFU students. After brainstorming the best medium through which to connect with students, the Sustainability Office and Creative Services settled on the idea of a “playful and catchy video.”
Enter Moxon. As a member of SFU Creative Services by day and musician by night, Moxon offered to lend his songwriting talents and personality to the Zero Waste video.
“It’s pretty easy to get behind green initiatives and recycling and doing that sort of thing in general, and it sounded like a fun project,” Moxon said. “Alex [Konyves], the key creative director, was the one who approached me about being involved and he just had this idea to do a sort of musical-esque video to promote it and it just sounded like an interesting way to approach it and raise awareness around it.”
Moxon has been composing music for SFU Creative Services since 2006, but this video was a new experience for the entire team.
“This was the first time they asked me to act in something, so that’s a little out of my element, but I sort of said I’d give it a whirl and try,” said Moxon. “At first they were talking about having a chorus line with people dancing, and I said I don’t mind singing the song and doing my thing, but I don’t know if I’m going to jump around and dance . . . it’s a little bit out of my element, but I was happy to do it for an interesting and good cause.”
Although Bend Sinister’s new album is coming out this March, Moxon does not feel like he needs to choose between being frontman of the band and the face of the Zero Waste Campaign. “I think I can probably do both at the same time,” he said. “I don’t think they have any further campaign schedules for me to go from campus to campus promoting being green and recycling . . . I’d be happy to do both.”
SFU hopes to divert 70% of its waste from landfills by 2015, but for Telling this is only the first step in a grander environmental initiative: “Our vision is that, by the end of 2015, the only people not understanding and accepting as natural how to use the new bins will be people arriving at SFU from beyond the Lower Mainland.”
