By: Emmet Paradis

Edited by: Natalie Cowan

The Queen’s Sustainability and Unconventional Solutions Club (QSUS) is entering a rebuilding year. One focused on restructuring, expanding perspectives, and laying the groundwork for long-term sustainability initiatives on campus. 

According to co-chair Leo Yang, most of the club’s current executive team is new. They’ve spent the semester rethinking QSUS’s role, mandate, and direction. 

“It’s kind of like a brainstorming time,” Yang said. Instead of rushing to host events immediately, the team has been focusing on sponsorship, speaker outreach, logistics, and defining what sustainability should mean within the club.

QSUS’s central goal this year is to highlight unconventional perspectives on sustainability, like the idea that sustainability isn’t limited to environmentalism. Yang emphasized that students often see sustainability purely as climate action, but the club wants to broaden this view to show students how sustainability intersects with politics, business, community engagement, and decision-making.

A major part of this shift comes from the team’s diverse academic backgrounds. The newly hired members span PPE, engineering, commerce, health sciences, psychology, and environmental science. Yang said that this interdisciplinary mix helps bring a wide range of ideas into internal discussions, creating a more democratic decision-making process within the club.

While QSUS is currently in its planning stage, two sustainability projects are already in motion. 

The first is a tree-planting initiative that originated last year. The first iteration of this idea envisioned students planting trees during orientation week or convocation so that they could leave something meaningful behind on campus. However, they discovered complications with university land permissions, and after speaking with Sustainable Kingston, they realized completing the project this year would be difficult. 

The club has since refocused the initiative through a partnership with Little Forests Kingston, a local group who frequently plants trees in the community. QSUS is now working to find a viable location on Queen’s property, with Yang explaining that they hope to move forward with this either this year or the following. 

Their second initiative is a plant-distribution program aimed at first-year students. QSUS hopes to offer small, affordable plant pots that students can keep in residence and grow throughout the year, followed by a collective planting event in the spring. This project is designed to help new students build community while engaging with sustainability in a simple, accessible way. 

The Conference: QSUS’s Main Focus

The club’s largest undertaking this year is a sustainability conference in March, which QSUS plans to host during Queen’s #SDG month (sustainable development goal) . Rather than a standard environment-themed event, the team wants to bring together speakers from various political backgrounds, government officials, and industry leaders.

Yang stresses that QSUS does not want a debate. Instead, the goal is to create a space where speakers can explain how real sustainability-related decisions are made inside government systems. He hopes the event will emphasize the behind-the-scenes processes students rarely get to hear about, like how ministers and premiers communicate, or how policies are developed. 

To shape the event, the club is currently reaching out to high-profile political and policy figures. QSUS is considering two potential conference formats: a smaller, workshop-heavy event with roughly 100 attendees, or a larger, speaker-driven gathering with over 200 participants. Venue availability and university support will determine which version becomes feasible.

The conference will likely appeal to Political Studies students as well as those in sustainability-focused degrees. Yang noted that the team wants to prioritize students interested in public policy and government decision-making. 

Community Engagement

QSUS is also rethinking how students can get involved with the club. Instead of a traditional membership model with fees or administrative steps, the club would create a brand ambassador program that gives students flexible, low-commitment ways to participate. Yang explains that many students are overwhelmed by university life, and might be unlikely to sign up for newsletters or formal memberships. As such, the ambassador program would allow them to engage with projects without feeling tied down. 

Although QSUS is still rebuilding, Yang emphasized that progress doesn’t have to be fast to be meaningful. The team’s goal is long-term impact rather than quick wins. 

“We’re not trying to do everything at once,” he said. The hope is that, over time, QSUS can shift how students understand sustainability and bring different perspectives into conversation at Queen’s. 

 

This article is published in partnership with the Queen’s Sustainability and Unconventional Solutions club (QSUS), based on a recent interview with QSUS Co-Chair Leo Yang. A special thanks goes out to the QSUS team for making this possible. 

 

Image Citation: Anncapictures. (2018). Earth Sprout Leaf [Photograph]. Pixabay.com. https://pixabay.com/photos/earth-sprout-leaf-sustainability-3289810/