From living trash-free to building a straw house, U-M has a history of challenging students, faculty and staff to directly take on issues, and sustainability is an area in which they have excelled.
Students and faculty from across many disciplines have personally have explored what it means to be sustainable. Here is a collection of blogs, videos and news articles capturing some of these green stories:
• Trash-free for 365 days: Darshan Karwat, doctoral student, chronicles his year-long journey to live trash free. The result of his efforts; only 7.5 pounds of trash produced.
minimizingentropy.blogspot.com
• A new spin on the merry-go-round: Graduate students from the student group, Sustainability Without Borders, built a merry-go-round to generate electricity to light a rural African schoolhouse. They also worked with colleagues from Clemson University to design and install a toilet system that creates biogas to fuel the school’s kitchen stove and a solar-powered produce dehydrator for foods.
ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=8509
• Water for all: Cynthia Koenig, recent graduate of Stephen M. Ross School of Business, reinvented the wheel by creating WaterWheel, a barrel to transport water in developing countries, and its distribution company Wello.
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ST0dSEFiVos#!
• Off-the-grid Internet: E-MAGINE, led by student director Rama Mwenesi, brought a solar-powered, cell-phone-based Internet system to rural Kenya this summer.
sustainability.umich.edu/content/u-m-student-brings-solar-powered-internet-rural-africa
• We built this house: Joe Trumpey, associate professor of art in the School of Art & Design, designed and built a solar-heated, water-cooled straw-bale house in Grass Lake.
