Plants, animals and sustainability awareness were important topics on the CSUN campus during the Earth Fair near Bayramian Hall Thursday afternoon.

In honor of Earth Day the day before, Associated Students presented an event to bring awareness to students about caring for the environment and making small changes to sustain it.

“I think this is really cool. I don’t feel like other schools do this,” said Janis Chavarro, a criminology sophomore. “I feel like CSUN kind of makes things a better environment and kind of makes people more aware of damaging the Earth.”

Students also learned about composting, recycling, planting and other methods to eliminate waste.

“We do this every year to bring more awareness to different sustainable lifestyle changes,” said Austin Ysais, CSUN program advisor. “There’s a lot of different organizations that [students] can be a part of that they can start using that can make their sustainable life decisions easier.”

The CSUN dining areas started several green projects to bring awareness to students about energy and waste management, green programs, eco-friendly products and other information about real unprocessed food.

“Most recently we’re celebrating our new cups. We’re one of two campuses in Southern California using these eco friendly Pepsi cups,” said Susan Dickman, program and marketing manager of The University Corporation. “They’re made of 50 percent of recycled materials and they’re covered in paraffin wax so they’re compostable.”

Krysten Williams, Vice Chair of the sustainability committee, also had a booth where she explained different ways students could become more active in using old food in new ways instead of wasting.

“Composting is basically making use of the food you would normally throw away, so we’re implementing a new program with the dorms,” said Williams. “You can throw your food into the composting bin and basically make your own fertilizer, and they’re using this fertilizer to increase the vegetation around the dorms.”

During class breaks, students lined up to paint concrete step stones. They made air plants and pet a baby zebra, a pig, and other exotic animals at the event. Students also took selfies in front of the wall of art near the Oviatt library or in front of the large inflatable cow.