Sustain Mizzou celebrated seven years as student-run campus organization Friday with food, birthday cake and socializing.

“It is really incredible that we are celebrating our seventh birthday this month because you don’t see a lot of student groups last organically like that and last beyond the original founders,” Sustain Mizzou President Tina Casagrand said.

Seven MU students founded the organization in 2004 out of dissatisfaction with the environmental groups on campus. At the time, the sustainability organizations met once a month or only once a semester and the students wanted more involvement and volunteering for actual causes, Casagrand said. Sustain Mizzou was founded with a mission to promote a sustainable way of life at MU through education, cooperation and local action regarding the environment.

Sustain Mizzou spokeswoman Kelly Gehringer said she attributes Sustain Mizzou’s successes to a growing and strong membership.

“I am most proud of our enthusiasm because I think that it takes very special people to care about some of the things we care about so passionately when other people could see them as somewhat trivial,” Gehringer said.

Sustain Mizzou has grown from seven members to an organization with more than 1,500 students receiving its e-mail newsletter. Sustain Mizzou has also has been increasing its numbers of sustainable projects. Projects range from the “Real Food forum at Mizzou,” a promotion of local and organic food on campus, to an e-waste drive Casagrand is heading this month during which students and faculty will be offered a place to discard old electronics.

Monica Everett, Sustain Mizzou Vice President of Programming, said the organization faced a turning point when MU established the Sustainability Office.

“I think the highs and lows came at the same time,” Everett said. “It was a kind of rethinking of our role as an organization on campus and what our goals were since there are now people paid to make Mizzou sustainable. It was a time to look and see where we were going and what we were going to do.”

Sustain Mizzou underwent serious structural changes and redesigned its executive board as a response to the changing power dynamics of MU sustainability on campus, Everett said.

“We are about working with the system and not against and I think it is helpful we have connections all over the university,” Everett said. “I think we are most proud of working with people who have the power to make a difference and not work against them.”

Sustain Mizzou was a key figure in supporting and passing the Student Sustainability Fee, a $1 per student per semester fee that was passed by campus wide referendum in February 2009.

“We all have different reasons for doing it and we are students who care and that is powerful and people will respond to students who care,” Everett said. “It really does show that students can change things on campus.”