The Cal Poly Environmental Council and non-profit organization One Cool Earth teamed with students to pot 550 trees Saturday. Photo by Katrina Borges- Mustang Daily

There’s a group of Cal Poly students who like to play in the dirt.

On Saturday, non-profit organization One Cool Earth and the Cal Poly Environmental Council teamed up to pot 50 Madrone trees and 500 Redwood trees that they plan to plant next weekend. The groups also picked acorns to plant Oak trees.

The Environmental Council is one of many programs developed by Cal Poly’s Student Community Services.

“The Environmental Council’s been around for a while, since the ’70s,” program director Barrie Valencia said. “We try to provide volunteers to other non-profits. We have lots of non-profits that we’re partners with.”

Both organizations work on a strictly volunteer basis, so no membership in either is necessary.

“This is just a volunteering organization,” Valencia said. “We provide events, and hopefully people come. Sometimes it’s not even volunteer stuff. Sometimes it’s like ‘Hey, there’s an Environmental Council film festival.’”

The group tries to do something every weekend

“We like to document our events on our Web site to serve as an inspiration to the community and show how easy it is to just go out and plant trees,” Ellis said.

One Cool Earth and the Environmental Council will be planting the acorns they collected at Whale Rock this Saturday. Ellis said they plan to plant about 500 acorns. Planters will be meeting in the administration parking lot at 9 a.m. and work until about 1 p.m., with a lunch break in between.

“Oaks are one of our specialties,” said Greg Ellis, leader of One Cool Earth. “They’re really easy to plant because the acorns drop and you just get them and plant the seeds in pots.”

More information about Environmental Council can be found at http://studentlife.calpoly.edu/scs/programs/environmental.asp. One Cool Earth also has a Web site: http://www.onecoolearth.org.