sustainability - art, design and social practice

I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out what I wanted to do for my final project. Nothing that I thought of seemed momentous enough for work in response to global climate change. I dabbled in the archiving of all of the trash in my back park alley area, laying all the used condom wrappers in a row, collecting shiny aluminum and arranging them in a rectangle, a dinghy, non-reflecting mirror perhaps. I ended up spending a bit of time creating minor interventions with the  human detritus I found that struck my eye. Arranging it and documenting the irresponsibility of trash. I was thinking a lot about the transient nature of consumption in our culture, how a plastic bag holds potato chips for a specific and mall amount of time, but exists practically forever. I wanted to highlight this by drawing attention to the garbage all around that is so prevalent and almost invisible. Here are some of my visual experiments.

A “Mirror”  and a moldy piece of paper that looked suspiciously like marble. A rotting trump l’oeil.

A woman asked me what I was doing and I told her I was trying to make art out of garbage. Above is one of the first plastic bags flags I made. The next photograph was kind of like a one minute sculpture, inspired by the Austrian artist Erwin Wurm. He and participants create one minute sitations with everday objects and their bodies. Here, the body is the tree and the object is a gutter drain pipe, I don’t know but it makes a nice triangle. The next photo is of an “installation/ intervention” where I found three flourescent lightbulbs in the trash outside of a church and arranged them in a triangle on the hill leading up to Druid HIll Park on Druid Hill Lake Drive. I placed it so that it hopefully could be seen by drivers speeding down the rode, a momentary glimpse of something that’s not supposed to be there, placed with care instead of abandoned after consumption.

A blooming umbrella flower.

A flag made from an abandoned umbrella and then on the right, crabs and flags.

Butter Knife in Foam

I came across these two tea bags that had obviously been dropped from a great height. They were right in front of the entrance to a very tall apartment building and when I looked up I noticed there were about five people on various floors peering over the edge of their balconies. I shook my finger and jokingly said ” Did you do that?” I don’t know why. The tea bags look like victims in a crime scene, or perhaps it was a joint suicide. In any case, the gestural quality of the “splat!” and idea that somebody, once they were through with them, disposed of them in the way that they saw fit. I guess I am really inspired by “Cradle to Cradle” and the “away” mentality of our consumer culture. The simple idea that matter doesn’t just disappear once the garbage man takes it away, or you throw it, drop it, discard it, was something I was thinking about when I was taking these pictures. I just wanted to show that these things, these littered objects are there, while it is so easy to not see them because they blend seamlessly into the urban landscape of detritus.

These ideas led me to make various forms of flags from found and recycled materials. The gifts that I gave to the remaining student in class was my attempt to reuse materials that had been discarded. The umbrella flag posts were found on broken down umbrellas blowing down the street after a heavy rain. The fused plastic bags is a trendy pastime found in various forms on Instructables. I wanted to make these flags that highlight the reusable lifespan of everyday objects. To highlight the permanence of trash. To highlight that things don’t just go away.

The video that I made : “My Global Warming Movie” was a hodge- podge collage of clips from my life and the youtube universe. I am really overwhelmed and confused about the understanding of what climate change is to the greater public sphere through mas media. This muddled video further confuses but also provides a lot of information I think. The intro was pirated off of youtube and is a prototype of thousands of videos made by people that make little to no sense but are very dramatic. The video features Tom Cruise and Warren Beatty, babies, my plastic bag flags, Lester Brown ( climate change expert) and clips form my everyday life, oh yeah, and Karen Carpenter. It’s silly but also reflects the confusing information overload that the internet and TV provides us.

This semester I wanted to do something that I could see some results  from. I am really interested in our relationship with food: where it comes from, how it gets to us, how we eat it. So, I decided to try to have a little more of a closed circuit then the industural monoculture farm to supermarket to fridge to landfill model. I aimed to make a garden-dinner plate-garden version.

I built a compost bin first. It was relatively easy. All you need is a 55 gallon drum, a board about as big as the drum, a miter saw, drill, 4 non pivot wheels, four bricks, two hinges, two locks, and some bolts and screws. I got my barrel for free and the rest was about 30 bucks.

To assemble it, just cut a hole as big as you want in the barrel (has to be big enough to get the compost in and out). Attach it back with the hinges at the bottom and a lock on either side. Dill a few holes in bin so your compost can vent. Attach the wheels to the board evenly spaced, and make sure they run on the outside of where you made your door. The board gets set on the bricks to keep it elevated off the ground and the bin itself gets placed on the wheels.

Wallah! You have a compost bin. To make some compost you need green stuff: fruit and vegetable remains, grass clippings, fresh leaves, stuff like that and brown stuff: dead leaves, shredded paper (no magazines). Make sure you add equal amounts of green and brown stuff otherwise the green stuff will smell and attract bugs. All you have to do is roll the bin once a day if possible and you should have nutrient rich compost in a few months! Put in your garden.

I also built a raised bed to grow produce. For this you need 4 equal sized boards (mine are 6ft long by 12in wide) and four posts (2 foot sections of 2×4). I cut points into the posts and drove them into the ground with a hammer. I also made a little trench for the boards to sit in and hammered them in as well. Then just screw the pieces together. That’s it, fill it with a mixture of topsoil and compost and you are ready to start planting.

I also found this weird organization fridgewatcher.com while I was doing research. It is just a collection of peoples fridges from around the world. I am going to post a before and after of my parents fridge (its their land that the garden is built on) to see if it has any effect on what their diet looks like.

-Michelle

After indulging in a weeks worth of movie watching at Arundell Mill’s Movico 24 Egyptian theatre, I am now fairly confident to say that I feel aware of what a typical American person would choose to experience when they buy a ticket stub at the movies. Though my week of movie watching only portrays a glimpse of what other films the rest of the year has to offer, I still feel like I managed to become familiar with a cross section of what pop culture is playing a roll in today’s cinema. By viewing each movie I saw through a sensitive lens, I was able to understand what was present and what wasn’t present in each. Throughout the presentation of this limited, yet dynamic variety of movies, I was able to understand what each featured as a whole. This whole was ultimately lacking in the material I was looking for.

I was looking for an adequate representation of what it meant to “Think Green” in today’s cinematic realm, surrounded by a world constantly being infiltrated by a conscious effort to be more environmentally aware. In today’s world, everyone is ready to jump onto the “Green” bandwagon. Being “Green” is a marketable thing to many people, and now many individuals are responding to this new fad. Whether its conscious or unconscious, people are tending to respond to today’s major issue: the world’s ever heating climate and growing efforts to live more sustainable lives in order to combat this dire issue. It is true that companies and franchises are doing the best they can to market themselves after this model. With the help of a graphic designer or an advertiser, what wasn’t “Green” to begin with will magically become earth friendly because of a green type setting or an illustrated leaf. This is our trend in marketing and pop culture today. By attending screenings at Movico 24 I have been attempting to discover whether or not this same popular phenomenon has graced today’s movie screens as well.

After watching a total of ten movies in a week, I can safely say that I feel surprised by my findings. More movies than I anticipated featured a sort of “Green” mentality, though none of them conveyed a very dire need to make an effort to change the way we live and function as Americans. Through the means of popular American cinema messages and stories were told and plots unraveled, but I can’t say that much of an effort was made to explain today’s global warming battle, or what we have to do to stop it. The movies I saw either casually mentioned “Green” issues without providing an answer to their problems, or didn’t reference anything sustainable or “Green” at all. True today’s movie industry is tending to respond to what is marketable and trendy, but why not use the magic of a moving image in a movie to make a creative narrative as an attempt to use film to make a difference on a larger scale.

Efforts were made, but none were as successful as I would have hoped. At least four out of ten movies had a direct or indirect reference to something being “Green” within the context of the film. Frankly, I found that there was a higher count of movies referencing “Green” culture than what I was expecting to find, but none of the movies took it the step further to confront the viewer about what can be done in today’s world to stop wasting as much energy.

Even within the context of the movie theatre energy was wasted. To complete this project affordably, I often had to sneak into movies after I had purchased a ticket for the previous film. Many times I was the only person in the theatre and I hadn’t purchased a ticket. Even if no one was in the theatre, they would have wasted the energy to play each film regardless of whether or not each movie had an audience to view it at all. Avoiding screening each movie if there wasn’t an audience would be an obvious first step towards making the movie theatre itself more energy efficient. In terms of each movie’s content, it was obvious to see that many movies had jumped onto the “Green” bandwagon, some refrecinces being subtler than others.

The first movie I saw was Alien VS Monsters in 3D. I was given a pair of glasses when I purchased my ticket and then made my way into the theatre. I was the only person there, sitting in a huge stadium seated theatre. Before the movie began and after the previews I was pleasantly reminded to “Please Think Green” and recycle my glasses after I wore them when I exited the theater so that they could be reused. This was a refreshing change from being reminded to turn off my cell phone. This was a great beginning to my project, but as I continued to watch the movie I found that for the most part there wasn’t anything else sustainable featured in this digitally animated children’s movie. There was one surprise in the movie though. In one scene a character resembling a fish-like lock ness monster finally puts his feet on ground for the first time in decades after having been locked up in a monster prison. His first comment after walking on the pavement is, “ Is it true that the earth is getting warmer? That would be a very convenient truth.” An attempt was made to be “Green” by referencing the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary on Al Gore’s campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide. This reference probably wasn’t understood by children watching the movie and probably only some parents picked up on the nod to Al Gore, so even thought this was a “Green” reference, it wasn’t successful in teaching children or parents alike to be more conscious of the way we live to combat the crisis of today’s global warming.

The next movie I saw was called 17 Again, which starred today’s most popular preteen hunk Zac Affron. The movie began on the court of a high school basket ball game in 1984. The main character stops playing ball because he realizes that his girlfriend is pregnant. This speeds up to the future and shows himself working a hard job with a wife and two kids in the middle of a divorce. He wants nothing more than to retrace his steps and keep playing basketball. Eventually Zac Affron’s character is then again transformed to what he looked like when he was in high school because the school’s janitor granted his wish. This movie had nothing sustainable or green minded featured in the movie whatsoever. There was a mild example of a need to grow and plant in the earth because the mother in the movie was striving to become a landscape designer. Throughout the movie she was shown planting a showroom in her backyard complete with a new fishpond and new gazebo. There wasn’t a vegetable garden in her suburban back yard, only flowering shrubs colored lights.

The movie State of Play was about a reporter for the Washington Post, played by Russell Crow, trying to find the answer to a mystery. After researching some deaths, he finds himself involved in a larger story. He is a true to life reporter, totally obsessed with finding the truth. He lives alone and doesn’t seem to care about material objects. He only has a 15-year-old computer and drives an old beaten up car. He lives for the story and doesn’t have a family to call his own. His friend in the film, played by Matt Damon, is a political man is attempting to make corruption less challenging, but at the same time is connected to the outcome of the killings at the beginning of the movie. This movie is a tangle of events all driving off of a single plot story of a conspiracy theory about the American Defense system and Homeland Security. This movie had absolutely nothing to do with sustainable issues.

Obsessed, Haunting in Connecticut and Observe and Report also had nothing to do with climate change or sustainability. These were the two movies furthest away from being even vaguely related to being “Green”. Obsessed was about a deceiving temp hired to serve as a man’s secretary. She becomes fanatically obsessed with the man she works for and does everything in her power to make her boss love her. She is unsuccessful with her efforts and by the end of the movie she has to deal with her boss’s wife, who is played by Beyonce. There is only one mild example of “Green” culture in this movie. When Beyonce’s husband eats lunch at work he takes a boxed salad and Whole Foods Brand soda out of the refrigerator.

Haunting in Connecticut was a typical horror movie about a family that moved into a haunted house, which previously served as a funeral home. The house’s curse puts the family’s lives in danger and nearly kills a boy with cancer living in the house. Eventually throughout the movie the boy with cancer finds a way to free the spirits living in the house and without surprise, all ends well.

Observe and Report was a dark comedy directed by Rud Apatow. This was critique about how many people live and work in America today, ultimately unhappy and conflicted by the need for material culture. This followed the trials and tribulations in the troubled life of a mall security guard, trying to find some sort of meaning in his life. After a streaker is caught tormenting the ladies of the mall, he believes that his ultimate calling is to find and hunt down this individual and stop him from exposing himself. In the mean time he drives a two-seater security car and when he’s not working he drives a motorcycle. This was a bad movie and it had no examples of anything “Green” except for the way he used transportation.

The next movie I saw was I Love You Man. This movie was the best example of a group of people who would probably like to have done something better to fight the efforts of climate change but who are forced to live within the confines of traditional Los Angeles ways of life. This movie was infiltrated by today’s vague notion of what it means to be a person attempting to be better for the earth. This movie documented today’s convoluted notion of what it means to be a good person using less energy while still living a normal life. The movie starred a couple of typical 28-36 year olds, and though the movie wasn’t actually trying to focus on portraing semi-environmentally conscious people, in my mind it successfully did so.

This was also another Rud Apatow movie primarily about a man who didn’t have a best man to be at his wedding. He didn’t have a friend to call his own besides his wife to be. In order to find the perfect “man friend,” his family hooks him up on dates attempting to find him a guy for him to be buddies with. His brother makes him try hanging out with a weird man from his gym, and his mom makes him have dinner with a family friend’s son, who ends up being gay and awkwardly kisses him passionately after they eat a casual dinner. When he returns home he explains the situation to his fiancée and she politely suggests that he use some “TOMS” in the medicine cabinet. He responds saying that he feels like he has to use chemicals this time, and then proceeds to brush his teeth to get rid of the taste of the man’s kiss. Not often in a mainstream movie to you have reference to the use of naturally made toothpaste. Paul Rudd’s character even takes a thermos to his office to drink coffee out of. Though the movie doesn’t actually state these things for a fact, these are small examples of conscious efforts to live a better way of life, by effectively attempting to help the earth little by little. These are the efforts made by a normal person like myself.

When he finally meets the man of his dreams he finds a person who is even more earth conscious than himself. His new friend drives a Vespa and lives in a house that appears as though it wouldn’t actually use much energy. In casual conversation when they are getting to know each other they quickly mention the idea of hybrid cars and say how great they are. Later on he also claims that his dog’s poop is good for the earth, so he never picks it up. This causes comedic relief throughout the movie because people often step in his dog’s poop when they walk by it. Later, once they have become better friends, they go on a long day hike in woods in the county on Los Angeles. These are the kinds things that people do who want to do more things “Green” but don’t have the ability or means to do so. Though they didn’t vocalize this need to be green in the movie, it was obvious that if their characters carried on in real life without being on film, they would have shown more examples of them vaguely following this issue. These characters reminded me of my friends and my own attempts at “being green.” Depending on our situations, there are only certain things that people can do to change our lives into sustainable ones, while living the lives that we all live now. For Jason Segal and Paul Rudd’s characters, they had to live in Los Angeles, the driving capitol of America. Jason Segal’s character combated this by driving a Vespa, but like any other typical young 30 year old, Raul Rudd’s character drove a Volkswagen station wagon. There is only so much a person can do, especially living in Los Angeles in today’s vaguely “Green” conscious world.

Fast and Furious is about exotic cars racing across Los Angeles and through the Mexican desert. Staring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, this movie is about avenging a notorious drug lord ruling a heroin trade in Los Angeles and Mexico. With the use of tricked out high speed cars, it is their job to out drive the traffickers and beat them at their own game. The beginning of the movie features a successful run at hijacking three full fuel tanks on the highways of the Dominican Republic. Dominic Toretto Vin, Diesel’s character, who was also considered to be an international criminal, refers to the fuel they stole as “liquid gold” in the film. This is the only consideration the movie has to the way that it supplies it’s cars with such expendable amounts of energy. It was the most extravagant movie I saw in terms of the energy waste depicted in the film. The cars featured were some of the most indulgent cars I’ve seen in real life, but also in film. Obviously it wasn’t the movies aim to promote the use of hybrid vehicles, it was promoting gas guzzling high speed machines, the complete opposite of an eco-friendly engine that turns off when it stops. This movie was complete with explosions, guns, chase scenes and tricked out machines bulging out from under the hoods of pimped out cars. Fast and Furious predictably was a car man’s racing dream and nothing else.

Knowing is a movie based around conspiracy theory of a page of supposed random numbers written by a seemingly mental disorder/mentally disturbed girl from 1959 who could predict all of the national disasters of the future. After her page of numbers is recovered from a time capsule, the little girl’s curse is given to another little boy who’s father is a professor at MIT, a man played by Nicolas Cage. Nicolas Cage’s character is able to decode the page of numbers and is then able to realize that the numbers are a list containing the dates and death tolls of every major disaster, natural and man made, that has happened over the past 50 years, with three that have not yet occurred.

Eventually he realizes that the third and final sequence of numbers is an attempt to give a warning of the end of the world. He realizes that a large solar flare from the sun is going to sweep up and incinerate all of the planet, piercing the ozone layer by the over productivity of the sun’s violent damaging heat rays. This fact is eventually spread across the world and in a scene depicting a news flash broadcasting the Nation’s president, he explains in a live video feed that, “The heat that we are experiencing is getting worse and solar damage has become more of an issue than the world had realized.” He advises everyone to be with his or her families and remain underground, capturing on the way people react to today’s very vauge interest in the sun’s damaging capabilities. In the mean time, following the movies Sci-Fi routs, a group referred to as the whisper people has chosen Nicolas Cage’s son. They ask him leave Earth on their ship in order to start a new world. Eventually his son boards a ship, which departs from Earth. As anarchy reigns in New York City and Boston, Nicolas Cage’s character arrives to be with his parents and sister just as the solar flare strikes Earth and incinerates all life on the planet leaving it a fiery star. Though it was fanaticized, this allowed the audience to believe for a minute that maybe people do need to tend to the earth more considerately; otherwise the sun’s powerful beams could actually destroy life on earth forever.

What I thought was going to be a horror mystery about numbers, actually became a dramatic suspense filled movie about the power controlled by rays of the sun. This fanaticized narrative made a real life reference to the sun’s inevitable desecrating power and turned the movie into something more realistic than a typical Sci-Fi mystery drama.

The final movie I will talk about also made many references to the power that the sun possesses and was obviously the most “Green.” This movie was called Earth. Earth is a feature-length version of the documentary award-winning BBC series Planet Earth, following the migration paths of four animal families across the world. The first U.S. release from Disney was Earth, which debuted on April 22, 2009 - Earth Day. The Walt Disney Co. made the movie after launching a new film production unit called Disneynature, the latest entertainment company to hop on corporate America’s green bandwagon. From 1948 through 1960, the Disney studio produced a 13-film series “True-Life Adventures,” eight of which won Academy Awards, which displayed the active lives of animals around the world. Disneynature is now a striving to attempt to market a way to connect its self to its “Green” routs, which Walt Disney began at the company’s foundation.

The American version of this movie is narrated by James Earl Jones, who gracefully adapts his voice to explain the lives and tribulations of animals and their families living on our planet; the opening quote of the movie being, ”There is no better time than now to show animals trials on the big screen.” “In a world that is ever changing, we follow animals and it’s young.” The film opens with a story about a family of polar bears. Right off the bat the movie explains the danger of the sun’s growing power and how it threatens the lives of the polar bears and cubs it’s documenting. The movie explains that the sea ice is the only place where the bears can find food and if the ice melts prematurely, then the family of bears could starve and die. The movie even goes into detail describing how glacial run off mixing with salt water speeds up the melting process. Throughout the whole film the lives of the bears are sensitively documented, but specifically of the father polar bear whose job it was to retrieve food for his wife and cubs. This polar bear fails his attempt and doesn’t make it back home to his family. He starves due to a lack of food and becomes physically exhausted because the ice floor melts underneath him melted while he tried to gather food, forcing him to be lost at sea. He is forced to swim to a new part of land and when he does finally find potential prey he is too physically strained and much to exhausted to kill anything. During this moment it is stated, “Our planet is warming and is becoming an increasingly dangerous new world. With each year as our planet grows warmer, this becomes more and more of a disaster for polar bears. It will be a surprise if he survives.” The polar bear falls to the ground and is shown dying next to a flock of sea lions. This tender moment sheds light onto our current state of being on this earth. At the end of the movie a very real and true fact is stated, “This is the circle of life that most of us in our urban lives have lost touch with.”

According to the Disneynature website, the effort made to feature a more real world film is an issue in tune with our time today, “Stories that are more than stories. There was a time when most people viewed nature as something apart from themselves. In the 21^st century, there is an increasing awareness that we are all a part of nature…a fact we ignore at our peril. DISNEYNATURE will reinforce an understanding of the interrelatedness of all life on earth. Working closely with conservation organizations on each film, Disneynature will not only tell the stories of nature but will let people know how, through their actions, they can affect the story’s ending.”

True this movie was an obvious attempt to get people and young children more aware of today’s dire need to focus on the issues of climate change, however the film failed to show how a person could potentially help to change the way we live in order to use less energy, effectively or indirectly, helping the conditions in which polar bears and other animals a like live on this earth. It didn’t straight up mention that something needed to be done on a personal human basis. The movie only talked about the sun’s heat as if it was only something that happened regardless of our actions as human beings. Though this movie was the most commercially “Green,” it did just as much as the others did in terms of educating the public about sustainable issues. True the other movies didn’t actually have a means to talk about the issue within the context of their plot, but Earth was directly related to the issue and failed to mention that there are ways that people can try to help the dangerous impact the sun has on our existence and the world, animals and humans included. An amazing three out of ten movies made references to the growing heat of the sun, but none of them attempted to address how to change this fact.

Like I Love You Man, Earth casually addressed today’s “Green” mentality without actually supplying an answer. Though it is a hard answer to achieve, people’s knowledge of the issue is still perpetually vague. I was amazed to see that so many moves incorporated “Green” issues into their films, but I was sadly reminded that in today’s culture typically it is only a topic of discussion and not one of action or responsibility. I am looking forward to a day when the needs and wants of the earth are appropriately voiced to the public in a straight forward, yet casual way as it could effectively do so in the setting of the silver screen.

For my final project, my goal was to work with kids and teach them some of what I have learned this semester about our environmental crisis. My second goal was to observe which parts of my interaction with them get them excited and forced them to be most engaged. I visited my sister’s third grade class last week, and this was my experience….

After we talked together about the dangers of wasting energy and emitting carbon into our atmosphere, we made a list of ways that they are already working to lower their carbon footprint and what they might do in the future.

Next we completed an art activity together. Each student was given his or her own paper light switch cover with the message “Save our planet” and “Please turn me off!” As a class, we discussed what we might draw on our light switches. Most of the kids decided to portray parts of the environment we don’t want to hurt such as trees. Others chose convey pollution and ways that wasting energy is bad. Here are some of their final results:

I have done a great deal of reflecting since my classroom visit, and my sister and I came up with a number of ways the students can lower their classroom energy waste.

1) List of Internet resources for teachers (my sister will share the list with her colleagues)

Teacher Internet Resources:
• Glacier -Information on ice, Antarctica and the Arctic.

• The Everglades -Grades 4-8 - This site from the Discovery Channel presents a highly visual treatment of the Everglades ecosystem, why it is important, and how it is deteriorating.

• Friends of the Earth -Learn what you can do to be a better citizen of our earth

• Global Response -an education and activist oriented non-profit organization dedicated to disseminating detailed case information to students, teachers, and Eco-clubs about the most impending environmental crises. Also organizes international student letter-writing campaigns in response to these environmental emergencies. Classroom packets are available for teachers

• Green -Global Rivers Environmental Education Network

• Water Science for Kids -Everything you need to know about water. Activity Center, Glossary of Terms, Earth’s Water, Water Use Information, Picture Gallery, etc. Brought to you by the US Geological Survey

2) Kid-oriented environmental website list posted next to the classroom computer. When student behave well, they can earn computer time. This now makes caring up about the environment associated with positivity and reward.

Kid Websites
• EekoWorld -PBS website where kids can create their own “EekoCreature” and help overcome environmental problems (age 6-9)

• Nature Challenge for Kids -David Suzuki Foundation offers simples ways kids can protect nature and provides links to other kids websites

• Kids Planet -Species fact sheet, web of life chart, wildlife adoption center

• Eco-Kids -Earth Day Canada’s environmental education program. Helps kids understand the impact of their actions and encourages kids to make decisions and form their own opinions

• The Green Squad -NRDC website. Focuses on how to save energy in the classroom

• The Big Blue Bus -A place kids can learn about the world’s water sources. Kids age 7-16 can sign up to be “water wizards”

• Global Warming Kids Site -EPA site explains global warming and its causes on a kid friendly level

• I buy different -Teaches kids about how the things they buy (or their parents buy them) impact the environment

3) Tracking the energy waste of the fluorescent lighting in the classroom: Next to the light switch at the front of the classroom, there will be a chart where the class will keep track of the amount of time they keep the light on and turn them off. The goal is for the students to decrease the amount they leave the lights on as time progresses. The weekly totals will be graphed, and the goal for the class is to watch that line go down over the last six weeks of school. This ties into the students’ math unit this year because they have learned about simple graphs.

4) Scrap Paper Bin: The students will keep a bin in the classroom where they will keep any old hand outs of written on paper that has one clean side. This is one step better than recycling!

5) Environmental Awareness Section in Reading Corner: My sister keeps her books organized into sections such as “science books” and “history books.” She is starting to collect books for a “Green” section.

6) Wasted Styrofoam trays: My calculations show that my sisters class of 20 students use about 6,660 lunch trays in just one school year. To me, this number is frightening. Although it would be ideal of the trays to be plastic and reusable, that is a longer term goal. In the mean time, my sister’s class will attempt to reuse the Styrofoam trays for as many different meals and days as they can. After each meal, it will be a student’s job to collect the trays from his or her classmates and the stack will be kept in the classroom ready for the next meal. At minimum, the number of trays used yearly could be cut in half.

Those are just a few of the solutions I came up with for my sister to implement in her classroom. I plan to visit her students again later in the year and take our energy discussion a step further, and see what progress they have made as a class to lower their carbon emissions. I had an incredibly fun time working on this project and I learned a lot in the process.

Carbon Footprint Calculations

My carbon footprint numbers ranged from 16 to 24. The amount of energy I use in heating and cooling was drastically higher in comparison to the use of my truck, lights and household/studio appliances. I believe that this is due to my living in a warehouse with 4 to 5 other folks who all use space heaters despite our gas fueled heating system. The warehouse is a wide-open space with many big windows and brick walls. The vents are all at the top of the very high ceilings, preventing us from even feeling the heat, for it rises up to the loft space above. We all pay about $200 to BGE during the winter months due to the extra use of space heaters and the constant blasting of the 70 degree wasted heat. During the summer we each pay about $30 to $40.

We are all very good about recycling and not making many purchases of plastics and packaged foods/goods. My roommates and I are all vegan/vegetarian. Some of us go to the farmer’s market or to Whole Foods to buy groceries. I personally, buy vegetables and fruits locally and buy packaged goods and snacks at Ok Natural or Whole Foods.

Only one of my roommates and I drive vehicles, but I am the one who drives my truck the most. Everyone else walks or rides the bus or their bikes based upon the weather. I depend upon my truck more during the winter and while in school, due to my always having to bring a great deal of materials to class. During the spring/summer I drive less and ride my bike more.

My Approach to Reducing my co2 Output

I insulated the windows with plastic and begged everyone to either turn off their space heaters or turn the heat off, proposing that we instead layer up with more clothing. We decided to layer up more, refrain from using our space heaters and to only turn the heat on at night. I also asked everyone to unplug every appliance while not in use or to invest in power strips, keeping them turned off when not needed. We all agreed and also became more aware in our turning off lights when leaving our rooms. Our individual BGE bills dropped to $124 this month. It’s a start, but I feel that it could be lower.

I would like to start growing my own food and composting. It bothers me that we all throw away so much scrap foods and when we juice, all of the meat and flesh of our fruits and vegetables gets thrown out. I am beginning to do research on composting and my roommates and I are interested in planting a garden on the roof this summer.

I am apart of a creative alliance group and I approached them with ideas of lowering our Carbon Dioxide output individually and collectively. We are making plans to start a vegetable garden this summer. We are going to give the food away to people in our neighborhoods and reach out to kids and encourage them to come and learn how to maintain a garden and the importance of developing a relationship with nature. We have been brainstorming ways to approach folks in our communities to become more health conscious and aware of ways that they can be eco-friendly in their consummation of household appliances and trash output.

Some of the ideas we came up with so far:

-Offering free workshops where folks can come and learn about the importance
of buying foods locally and recycling, how to start and maintain community
gardens and teaching ways of living more energy and cost efficient.

-Development of community sidewalk free stores, establishing bartering/trade
systems of skill/service and clothing and old appliance exchange amongst one
another within their communities and neighborhoods.

-Coming up with creative projects to do with kids, using recycled plastics and
other materials. Teaching them different ways of approaching art and at the
same time teaching them about how they can take part in preserving the planet.

As an artist, I have been thinking of ways to express my concerns with the state of our planet and the direction we are headed towards due to the way we live. I desire to visually send out messages that encourage folks to become more aware and responsible in their preservation of the earth. I feel that is important to start with learning about the materials I use: wood, paper and glue. I have decided to stop buying wood panels from Home Depot and rely solely on working on/with found wood/objects. I am now searching on Craigslist for materials to use in my art. I would also like to figure out how I can create my own archival glue and learn how to make papers. I am now consciously going to the wood shops and fiber classrooms to collect scrap materials.

I personally believe that there is a spiritual approach that can be taken in the healing of our earth. By consciously sending out love, thanks and praises to the earth for all of its beauty and natural resources, we can heal the earth. When we begin to apply creative visualizations of a healthy and abundant earth we can collectively and energetically bring forth healing. There are earth mantras and chants that I listen to and eternalize during my meditations that have been very helpful in my maintaining a positive outlook on the shifts that are taking place on earth. I have been listening to artist and healer, Jennifer Berezan, a great deal. Her album, Praises For The World, is a collaborative project produced with the intention of sending out love and healing energy to the earth. While listening, I think about how the earth functions naturally, sending thanks to the earth. I also visualize some of the many powerful and resourceful elements, thinking of how important they are and as a collective people using them properly and respectfully. I find it very inspirational, for it helps me maintain a healthy relationship with the earth spiritually. I have made copies for my friends, encouraging them to share it with others along with the knowledge of living in accordance with the earth and its needs, of which we are all continuously acquiring and applying daily.
Each one teach one…

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