Sustainability Blog

Michigan Tech is highlighted in a recent article on studyinternational.com news on universities that drive sustainability forward. Specifically, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering is highlighted as a sustainable choice for students “ready to become a responsible engineer.”

It is wonderful to see Michigan Tech highlighted for its strong programs in Civil & Environmental Engineering that teach sustainability and engage students as future leaders in sustainability in engineering. Michigan Tech also offers an undergraduate degree in Sustainability Science & Society and has multiple opportunities for research and campus engagement associated with sustainability.

The future needs Michigan Tech because the future requires we find ways to enhance sustainability and resilience, locally and around the world. If you’re looking for ways to contribute to a better future through your education and career, Michigan Tech provides opportunities for learning, leadership, and making a difference in everyday lives through your studies and your future profession.

This is a guest blog post from Zofia Freiberg, who can be reached at zjfreibe@mtu.edu.

 Over 200,000 people were killed and 83% of them were Mayan. Some called it a civil war, and some called it genocide. A United Nations backed report concluded that of all the human rights violations, 93% were carried out by state forces and military groups. With the war having only ended in 1996 and the continual political turmoil, three-fourths of the rural population lives in conditions of abject poverty.

 In San Juan Comalapa, a mural spanning 182 meters depicts the town’s history. Teachers, artists, students, and other residents of Comalapa painted the history of their culture, not to reinvent a sense of belonging in their nation, but to reclaim their past. Much of the mural features the violence of war, cultural suppression, and building collapse from earthquakes. Contrastingly, the final panels illustrate children attending school, carrying books, and embracing their Mayan culture. 

Matt Paneitz was stationed in Comalapa during his Peace Corps service. He decided that he wanted to be part of the positive force making the final few panels of the mural a reality. He founded a non-profit organization called Long Way Home. 

Long Way Home both physically and conceptually built a school system called Centro Educativo Técnico Chixot. The curriculum focuses on student-driven, community-based projects that address genuine needs. What is called “Hero School” is a place of democratic education built upon the idea that self-determination and democracy are fundamentally linked. Ultimately, the goal of the school is to empower students to build their own democratic systems and arm students with critical thinking skills to better handle symptoms of poverty. Education facilitated by cultures of privilege and power often become an indirect form of colonization. LWH actively works to avoid this; the curriculum is developed and facilitated by community members and taught in the native Mayan language Kaqchikel.

Prior to establishing the school, Matt was struck by the amount of trash floating through Comalapa. Though people depend on the land to grow food as their primary source of income and subsistence, trash is routinely dumped in a ravine that floods and pollutes the surrounding watershed. This motivated Matt to use alternative building techniques that combine naturalistic building with waste mitigation efforts.

Over spring break, a group of Michigan Tech students, myself included, travelled to Guatemala to volunteer with LWH and learn about their community impact and the Green Building Techniques used to build their campus. Equipped with sledge hammers and shovels, we learned how tires that were previously headed to the dump can be packed with sand and trash to create retaining walls or a structure for a home. Plastic sacks are placed on the bottom of the tires to hold in the sand that is packed down. Miscellaneous pieces of trash are also placed inside the tire. 

As we unlaced our shoes and grabbed buckets of material, we learned how to make cob: 3 buckets of clay earth, 2 buckets of sand,  2 buckets of water, straw, and a funny foot feeling later we made our first batch of cob. There were many more to come, since cob is a staple material on-site due to the similar properties it shares with traditional concrete. It is used on-site to fill in space around tires for interior and exterior finishes as well as to build walls between concrete structures.The volunteers on the campus tuck their single-use packaging into plastic bottles to create eco-bricks. These-eco bricks are used as fillers in cob walls. Liter sized plastic bottles are cut into shingles for roofs to protect structures from both rain and sun. Using trash as building materials is especially effective because it minimizes what has to be brought to the site and elongates the useful lifecycle of items already on site. 

In addition to the school for the local community, Long Way Home runs a Green Building Academy where participants come to learn about sustainable building methods while simultaneously contributing to current projects on the campus. The profits from the academy go towards funding the school. LWH demonstrates a model of service where contributions towards community development goals are not a zero-sum game where what is given up by one actor is gained by another. Instead, the transfer of value from one to another is a reciprocal exchange.

This was certainly true for the experience of the MTU students. Sitting in the airport waiting to depart, we discussed our expectations for the week. The consensus was that we had no clue what to expect. Yet  in true Husky style, we were eager to put in hard work and help another community. Sitting in the airport waiting to return, the conversation had flipped from what we thought we would be giving to all the value we had received. 

What I found to be most valuable from the trip was a newfound understanding of what makes for effective volunteerism and foreign aid. Ultimately, I don’t think we directly helped another community so much as we became a part of the LWH community and their collective efforts towards positive change. Offering up what you have to give as an empathetic outsider may be generous, but it is more efficacious in the long term to first become a member of the community you intend to help. Then, you no longer have to guess at what a community’s needs are because your needs and that of the community become one in the same. 

On the final panels of the mural in town, once just a vision, there is an illustration of the existing LWH school. Though LWH has a Hero School, they do not try to be the heroes of Comalapa. Instead of attempting to uproot and recreate existing social and economic systems, they build upon what already exists and give locals an avenue to become the heroes of their own community. 

Attempts to decipher the best mechanism to make humanity better can be dizzying to the extent of paralysis. To make matters worse, incremental progression is easily diminished with a glance to the news. When the news becomes an omnipresent noise, it can be comforting to just accept that people around the world live differently. However, cultural acceptance shouldn’t be used as a justification for global inequalities. It is a heroic act in itself to acknowledge what incremental good you can do in the face of all the bad. Let a focus on what it is you do have to contribute strengthen your will to act. 

This is a guest blog post from Nathan Hatcher, who is a Sustainability Science & Society Major at Michigan Tech. He can be reached at nrhatche@mtu.edu

Sustainability includes social, economic, and environmental aspects. Over this past spring semester, I became more aware of the sustainability activities that were going on behind the scenes at Michigan Tech. I learned about and attended events, like an Open House of the Sustainable Demonstration House  and the planned (but put on hold because of the current pandemic) Waste Reduction Drive. Others dealt with more logistics, like universal recycling containers across campus. 

The question of ‘How can we improve?’ became an interesting challenge. Improvements are essentially never ending, and can be implemented at various levels in the system, from individual student behavior, to the university leading the local community. 

Below are some suggestions that Michigan Tech may be interested in looking into, followed by tips designed for the individual. Whether you’re a fellow student at Michigan Tech, part of the Houghton/Hancock community, or stumbled upon this online, these tips may help you think about how you can live more sustainably or how your workplace or school can become more oriented to sustainability in its practices.

Suggestions for Michigan Tech: In your search for how to become a better representative of sustainability, please consider some of the following ideas or their concepts.

• Website adjustments
  • The university website platform could provide a place for students to be easily aware of recycling locations both on and off campus, which can help with reducing recyclable or reusable material in the landfill.
  • The tips mentioned for individuals may also be of help. The list is meant to be expandable.

• Campus accessible gardens over winter (Indoor gardens).
  • This may provide a way to enhance the social aspect of sustainability. Community, working together, building trust and relationships with others, helps improve sustainable practices. 
  • It can provide an active exercise for consideration of how others. A valuable tool, when determining the impact of an action/project on other people.
  • It can also help address the Food Insecurity concern on campus.

• Course(s) regarding cooking and gardening.
  • This provides a hands on way to understanding sustainability. From how crops are grown, to how food is prepared, and what can be done with leftovers. Composting, and organic growing methods can help with better understanding of the land and soil, and what might help improve it for continual use (taking fertilizers and related chemicals like pesticides out of the equation).
  • Trading practice could help with the face-to-face interaction, knowing where food comes from or how it is handled. It also helps support the local economy in cases such as farmer markets. Farmers may be inclined to produce what gets more support, including how the food is grown (fertilizer or none, labor, permaculture, etc.) Students understanding the value of supporting others and how to support actions of interest may improve the quality of decision making.

Tips for the individual:

It does not matter who you are or where you are from, these tips are meant for everyone. Feel free to copy this list and expand on it if you would like. These tips may vary in value depending on your own situation, or lack-there-of. The goal is to become more aware, or mindful, of daily actions and what might improve them.

Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

• Rethink: Asking yourself some of these following questions may help you become more aware of what you are spending, and if it is really necessary at the time.
  • Do I need it? (Is it a necessity or a want?)
    • How much do I already have?
    • Will it spoil before I use it? (Applies to anything with a date)
  • What do I need it for? 
    • Do I need it for daily tasks? (Cooking, Cleaning, Hygiene, Work, Relaxation)
    • What will I do with it later this week?
  • How much do I need? 
    • Will I run out before my next shopping trip?
• Reduce
  • Only get what is needed
  • What kind of waste will I generate by purchasing this? (plastic that cannot be recycled, non-reusable or non-recyclable packaging)
  • Buy in bulk when it makes sense and is possible. (Does not expire for a long time, or, a lot is used in a short period of time.)
• Reuse
  • What did I purchase or have that I can repurpose? (Large glass jars, tin containers, boxes, etc.)
  • Glass jars can usually be washed in a dishwasher and be used in various ways. Like a coin bank, a detergent container, juice, salsa, screws, nails, magnets, etc.
  • Boxes are helpful for moving, packing, and organizing. They can fold flat too without compromising the structure of the box. Do you know someone who needs some boxes? By offering boxes to them, you reduce what would have been waste, and they get a few boxes they may need.
  • Some packaging material may be worth holding on to, if it is intact, and you know someone who could use some packing material, ask if they would like it.
• Recycle
  • Check what all can be recycled in your local area and how to prepare the material, if applicable.
  • Cardboard (there are a couple different types of cardboard)
  • Various plastics
  • Glass (usually jars or bottles)
  • Paper (usually printer paper and magazines. Shredding it before recycling may be an option)
  • Bags (paper ones are usually ok, plastic ones usually need to be dropped of at a retail store)

The overall goal is to provide ways of reducing how quickly your trash bin fills up, and therefore, reduce what goes to the landfill. This is not a set list of instructions; rather, they are tips meant to spark awareness or maybe some ideas as to how each one of us can play a part in living more sustainably. It may even save you some money!

A group of MTU students traveled to Madrid to participate in COP25, the UN’s meeting on climate change. Their experiences are being shared via the MTU Unscripted blog:

• https://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2019/december/michigan-tech-students-participate-in-cop25.html
• https://www.mtu.edu/unscripted/stories/2019/december/the-road-to-cop25.html
• https://www.mtu.edu/unscripted/stories/2019/december/cop25-we-are-the-solution.html?fbclid=IwAR3WMJRidp79vfyrq87sIdiGNjXTWy-g2cPjPTa2iGkzvcv89hEvCqVzhAI

Their posts expand on the process and planning involved in getting them there as well as their experiences at and reflections on the event. They provide a great example of the determination and tenacity of MTU students and their efforts and contributions to improving communities across the world.

Climate change is a global and sometimes seemingly insurmountable problem, but the efforts of students traveling all the way from this small community in the UP are contributing to the changes that are necessary to ensure a planet that is habitable for future generations. We are lucky to have faculty at MTU committed to getting students involved in this globally impactful event (thanks to Dr. Sarah Green, Chemistry).

Students, we are proud of you and your work!