Teaching Michigan youngsters to creatively recycle: Northern Michigan University EarthKeeper Student Team Eco-Christmas

Caption for photo on lower right:

Tara Strong of downstate Grand Blanc (left) helps her daughter four-year-old Anja Strong make a recycled holiday card as Catholic EarthKeeper team member Kyra Filmore holds her baby son, Llewellyn, as her daughter Eileen also makes a card.
The youths made holiday cards and homemade herbal green tea at the NMU EarthKeeper Student Team Eco-Christmas Workshop held Saturday, December 12, 2009 at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette.

(Marquette, MI) – Dozens of youngsters from across Michigan created recycled holiday cards and homemade tea bags for gifts this weekend during the Northern Michigan University EarthKeeper’s Eco-Christmas Workshop at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette.
The Northern Michigan University EarthKeeper (NMU EK) Student Team hosted the workshop from 1-4 p.m. across from the children’s library attracting several mothers from the Lower Peninsula and a teacher from Paradise in the eastern Upper Peninsula who plans to bring the idea into her classroom.
While finding ways to entertain and educate her children while her husband checked out job offers in Marquette, Tara Strong of downstate Grand Blanc brought her young daughter and baby son to the Upper Peninsula Children’s Museum and then the Peter White children’s library.
“My husband is here interviewing for a residency position for after med school,” said Strong. “We just found out about the project from the librarian.”
“I love it. I love the recycling idea. We’re also on a very limited budget and so I really like the idea of recycling and hand making things. I think it’s great.”
Strong said she and her daughter “are having great fun.”
“I’ve been making crafts,” said four-year-old Anja Strong. “I made a tea bag and I have a honey bear stick”

Caption for photo in upper right:
16-year-old Negaunee High School junior Phil Lindblom, left, watches as volunteers iron wet recycled construction paper for youngsters to make holiday cards at the NMU EarthKeeper Student Team Eco-Christmas Workshop held Saturday, December 12, 2009 at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette.
Pictured ironing are Escanaba native Carole Beck (center) and 18-year-old NMU EK Student Team member Ellen Lindblom.
Visiting the Lindbloms in Negaunee for the weekend, Beck, who teaches in third through fifth grade at the White Fish Township Community School in Paradise, said she’ll take the NMU EarthKeeper’s idea into her classrooms and maybe make Valentines Day cards

Joined by her brother and a friend, 18-year-old NMU EK Student Team member Ellen Lindblom said the end of the semester meant lots of scrap paper lying around the university.
“School just ended and people have lost of papers left over” that was cut into tiny pieces by NMU EK team members, said Lindblom, an NMU freshman “You put it in the blender with a little bit of water and you blend it until it looks a little bit chunky like this.”
“You put it in a screen flatten it out – pat the water out,” said Lindblom, while using a towel and iron to dry and flatten the multicolored wet paper as 21 year-old NMU EK Student Team Director Ben Scheelk of downstate Charlevoix used a small hair dryer to speed up the process.
“We took a towel and pressed the water out to speed up the drying process a little bit,” she said. “Then flattened it out a little harder with an iron. I think it looks nice.”

Caption for top right and lower right:

Mike Robinson, a 21-year-old NMU senior geography major, from downstate Grosse Pointe, uses a blender to mix red, blue, purple and white bits of paper for youngsters to make into Christmas cards at the NMU EarthKeeper Student Team Eco-Christmas Workshop held Saturday, December 12, 2009 at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette.
“We are taking some scrap paper from various places and construction paper and making it into some pulp in a blender with some water,” said Robinson, a member of the NMU EK Student team.

His hand atop the lid on a blender that whirred with red, blue, purple and white bits of paper, Mike Robinson, a 21-year-old NMU senior geography major, from downstate Grosse Pointe, said the project is a “good holiday craft.”
“We are taking some scrap paper from various places and construction paper and making it into some pulp in a blender with some water,” said Robinson, a member of the NMU EK Student team.
Pressing the bits of soggy paper into a screen with borders, 16-year-old Negaunee High School junior Phil Lindblom said “this is what they call extreme pulp.”
“I am taking this wet paper and putting it on these screens and pushing water out of it,” said Lindbloom, whose sister is a member of the NMU EarthKeepers. “I am making new paper which is pretty exciting.”
Escanaba native Carole Beck, who teaches in third through fifth grade at the White Fish Township Community School in Paradise, said she’ll take the NMU EarthKeeper’s idea into her classrooms and maybe make Valentines Day cards.
“We’re trying to figure out how we could create the screen there that would be the only thing that we would need extra,” Beck said. “We should be able to do that.”

The students put out bowls with spearmint, raspberry leaves, juniper berries and rose hips that the youngsters used to “make a green tea – a detoxifying beautiful beverage,” said 21-year-old NMU EK Student Team Event Coordinator Amanda Emerson of Cary, Ill. “We also have honey sticks to go along with the tea.”
The herbs were donated by Catholic EarthKeeper Kyra Fillmore and the Marquette Food Co-op.
“You just wrap those up herbs in an eco-friendly coffee filter and tie it with a string in a nice little bow and there you go,” said Emerson, an NMU Senior Majoring in International Studies (emphasis on Latin America) and Earth Science (emphasis on rocks and minerals). “There’s your gift – a homemade card and homemade tea bags.”

Protecting the earth and teaching the young to respect the planet are major goals of the EarthKeepers, said 21-year-old NMU EarthKeeper Leandra Dziesinski of Alpena, MI.
“It’s very important to care care of your things and the earth is absolutely our thing – it’s where we’re at – so we have to take care of it we only have one earth, said Dziesinski, an NMU senior graduating in May with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. I think if we have a happy, safe and a clean place to live that just makes our population that much more happy.”
In September, the NMU EarthKeepers cleaned up hundreds of pounds of litter at the Upper Dead River Falls, a popular student hangout, Scheelk said.
The NMU EK Student Team is the youth wing of the Upper Peninsula EarthKeepers, an interfaith environment group involving over 150 churches and temples across northern Michigan.
The EarthKeeper Initiative is co-sponsored by the nonprofit Cedar Tree Institute, the nonprofit Superior Watershed Partnership, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and 10 faith communities: Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Methodist Church, Unitarian Universalist, Baha’i, Jewish, Quakers (Religious Society of Friends) and Zen Buddhist.

For more information on the Michigan EarthKeepers email or call the following contacts:

Ben Scheelk, Director of NMU EK Student Team
bscheelk@nmu.edu
231-675-0121

Rev. Jon Magnuson, Co-Founder of EarthKeeper Initiative
magnusonx2@charter.net
906-228-5494

Greg Peterson, news reporter and volunteer media advisor for the EarthKeepers and other projects
earthkeeper@charter.net
906-401-0109

U.P. EarthKeeper Team:

http://www.upearthkeepers.org

Nonprofit Superior Watershed Partnership in Marquette, MI

http://www.superiorwatersheds.org

Nonprofit Cedar Tree Institute in Marquette, MI

http://www.cedartreeinstitute.org