As Earth Day (April 22) approaches, Rose, Lexi, Abbey, Sammy and Kendra, the five women who live at the MTU Sustainability Demonstration House (SDH), have been thinking a lot about recycling, reusing, and reducing. The SDH is a residence just south of the Michigan Tech Campus where students can live in a way that is not only in balance with ecological principles, but encourages them to study their relationship to the Earth in creative ways. They learn good habits about energy and water consumption and work in coordination with the Alternative Energy Enterprise to demonstrate how energy costs can be kept low even in a climate like ours. I contacted them with questions about their venture, and they responded as a group.

There were so many plans for a celebration of Earth Day in the Spring of 2020, but due to the COVID-19 lockdown, Rose and Lexi were the only two residents at the SDH, and all of the projects, particularly those centered on public outreach, had to be cancelled. Art became a mechanism to publicly celebrate. Not having access to canvases, they decided to “become the canvases… just let ourselves be creative and express our love for the earth.”, and then share the pictures on their social media platforms.

This was a really good opportunity for these young women in engineering to use the creative side of their brains, and express something very personal. They painted a whole sunflower on Rose, from the petals to the roots, to emphasize the “intricacy of our earth’s floral systems and our deep human connection rooted to the earth.” On Lexi’s hands they painted a pink butterfly, and “a blue sky on her face to highlight the abstract beauty, both big and small, found on the earth.”

This year’s Earth Day theme will be the five natural “elements” that play an important and interdependent role in the functioning of our planet; water, air/sky, fire, earth and galaxy. Each of the five current residents of the SDH house will get to play one of these important roles. Watch for photos on the SDH Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/mtu.sdh) and Instagram Pages (https://www.instagram.com/mtu.sdh/). The Instagram page is actually one of the most important creative outlets for the SDH residents. Rose, Lexi and Abbey spend hours each week creating high-quality content with creative photoshoots and videos that demonstrate not only the current sustainability projects at the house but also the important messages that need to be publicized. For example, they recently did a photoshoot centered on the fur industry. Donning fake furs from thrift stores, they hoped to bring attention to the negative environmental impacts of industrial fur farming and brands to avoid that shamelessly use real furs in their products.

Recycling at the SDH has become an art form. They set up a High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) recycling system at the house, and have been transforming #2 plastics like milk and shampoo bottles into room numbers and tiles. In February they started an adopt-a-plant community event; taking plants that they have grown hydroponically, and planting them in white planters they have created using this HDPE recycling system.  They gave out 75 plants to MTU students, and each week there was a challenge for the participants. “The first challenge involved decorating the HDPE planter. Students really got creative with this challenge and transformed their white HDPE planters into beautiful pieces of art! “

One of the most important outreach projects of this group, though, is the upcoming Waste Reduction Drive – “In June of 2020, we collected over 46,000 waste items from the landfill that cannot be recycled curbside in the Keweenaw. While we were blown away by our community’s positive response to our waste drive, we wanted to take the drive as an opportunity to bring attention to the large amount of waste our society produces. We brought in a student photographer who specializes in political art and we had her take artsy photos of us with the trash.” This year, the drive will be will be held on Saturday, April 17, from 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. in MTU Parking Lot 22 by the Student Development Center. They will be accepting plastic film, dental products, razors & razor packaging, plastic bottle caps & rings, foil-lined wrappers, and egg cartons of all types and sizes. 

The students are really excited about everything they learned about living sustainably during their stay at the SDH. Becoming more conscious about the consumer culture is a big part of that education. Living a plant-based lifestyle; growing their own food and sourcing additional foods locally has taught them that even in a place like the Keweenaw, this is possible. Recycling paper and plastic waste to create new products have been an outlet for creativity and community outreach. “Because of this lifestyle we transitioned to, we can proudly say we are zero-landfill waste at the SDH.”

“Living in the SDH has really made us conscious of the impacts our lifestyles can have on our planet. We no longer focus on what’s in front of us, but rather the entire process of creation. We now understand the important role we play on this earth through every action we take. We get to decide the fate of many things and that is power we can use wisely or abuse. Since moving into the SDH, we have reconnected with the earth in many ways through composting our organic waste, eating a fully plant-based diet, and building self-sustaining systems to grow our own food and produce our own solar energy. Cutting back on the waste we produce and wisely selecting what we consume has empowered us to reestablish that special connection we have with our beautiful earth.”