From living trash free to building a straw house, U-M has a history of challenging students, faculty and staff to take on issues head on, and sustainability is an area where they have shone.
Students and faculty from across many disciplines have personally explored what it means to be sustainable. Here is a collection of blogs, videos and news articles capturing some of these amazingly 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.