Green jobs icon Van Jones urges big impact living

Former White House adviser speaks at GSU

To help demonstrate the efficiency of different modes of transportation around campus for No Impact week, Georgia Southern University staged the "Dump the Pump Challenge" Wednesday a race from the Rotunda to the Recreation Activity Center and back. Student Steven Gilland, center, won on a bicycle with a time of 9:59, student Zach Andsley, 23, left, came in second on a skateboard made of sustainable bamboo in a time of 11:24, First Transit and GSU alumnus Jule Peel, right, came in third by riding the campus bus system in a time of 18:05, and biology professor Jim Reichard, rear, came in last in his car in a time of 23:24.

041813 GSU NO IMPACT 019 — To help demonstrate the efficiency of different modes of transportation around campus for No Impact week, Georgia Southern University staged the "Dump the Pump Challenge" Wednesday a race from the Rotunda to the Recreation Activity Center and back. Student Steven Gilland, center, won on a bicycle with a time of 9:59, student Zach Andsley, 23, left, came in second on a skateboard made of sustainable bamboo in a time of 11:24, First Transit and GSU alumnus Jule Peel, right, came in third by riding the campus bus system in a time of 18:05, and biology professor Jim Reichard, rear, came in last in his car in a time of 23:24.

Van Jones, author of “The Green Collar Economy” and the only person to have served as green jobs adviser to a U.S. president, urged Georgia Southern University students to carry the messages of No Impact Week into a “big impact life.”Keynote speaker for the university’s third annual No Impact Week, Jones spoke Wednesday evening in a nearly full 800-seat auditorium at the GSU Performing Arts Center. No Impact Week is meant to encourage Americans to reduce their impact on the environment. At Georgia Southern, highlights include pledges not to generate trash, a farmers market, a race demonstrating the advantages of non-car transportation on campus and, Saturday, volunteerism for the Great American Cleanup.Asking questions of the audience, joking and calling on a few students by first name, Jones sometimes sounded like a graduation speaker.

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