By Yuki Nakayama, Ecology Center Writer

Michigan’s landfill methane issue has been largely ignored by policy makers, despite it being an area where local actions can lead to big impact — as both Mike Garfield, Ecology Center Executive Director and Melissa Sargent, Ecology Center Environmental Health Advocate stated in our previous methane story. Michigan is the sixth largest emitter in the country because we have a high number of landfills, import large amounts of out of state waste, and have weak landfill operation practices. As stated in the previous story, Ecology Center and our partners are advocating for stronger best practices at landfill sites. Now is the time to start taking action as the materials management process (MMP) is currently in the process of being updated across Michigan. 

Residential food waste and commercial food waste (including unsold foods from grocery stores) are the two big categories that require an immediate systemic response regarding landfill methane. They are a result of our current food system and culture that many of us do not often consider. That sad-looking cabbage you chose not to buy at the grocery store may have ended up in the landfill because the government, industry, and consumers have neglected to think about the entire life cycle of food products. When unsold foods or food scraps get placed in the trash, that is not the end, but rather the midway point of the products’ life cycle. As food is a crucial part of our daily survival needs, we need to take a bigger interest in what happens to our food waste. For this reason, our education team is working to expand the educational workshops and online resources about food waste diversion, the methane issue, and what people can do. 

The Important Role of Composting in Tackling the Methane Problem 

That said, it is difficult to eliminate food waste completely. This is why composting plays a crucial role in addressing the food that is not consumed in a sustainable and systemic way. 

Education about food diversion is also about removing hurdles and reservations that occur because people do not know the correct information. One of the biggest hurdles to composting is that people assume it will smell. We all know the foul smell that comes from a dumpster or our own trash bins, so it’s understandable that people would be concerned about the smells composting creates. According to Sargent, if you are composting correctly, it should not smell at all. Food waste smells more when it is thrown into our trash can with all of our other waste. If you don’t want to smell food waste, composting is the less smelly option. 

The first step is always getting informed about what is happening and what we can do. As a Michigan resident, I was shocked to learn that we rank sixth in the nation on this issue and that we are actually surrounded by waste whether we see it or not. I was sad to find out that my own trash is one of the things that is harming the beautiful landscapes of Michigan that I fell in love with. This knowledge alone has helped me be better about separating my organic materials and looking into ways I can compost. 

Food Waste Diversion as Community Building

Melissa Cooper Sargent emphasized that because waste management is a local matter, working to reduce and divert food waste, “can bring people together and lead to community building.” Locally-rooted food waste reduction programs help make participation more accessible for local residents and lead to more opportunities for community connections. In addition to shopping locally, reducing food waste in our homes, and composting individually, there are community based actions: call your local city offices to learn about local waste management options; advocate for composting at your work and schools; talk to your neighbors to start a collective composting project; (if you already are composting) help others start their own at home composts; use local composting companies and nonprofits; donate to and volunteer for food rescue groups; and spread awareness by talking about actions you are taking to friends and family. Such actions encourage us to look at what is happening in our local communities, talk to our neighbors, and work together to find solutions. 

Ecology Center is working with local grassroots organizations, like Breath Free Detroit and Sanctuary Farms, to support their efforts to develop small-scale composting and recycling in Wayne County that can be done even at the neighborhood level. These programs will create jobs and small businesses that will contribute to the local economy while reducing the environmental impact on residents that landfills frequently cause. We encourage readers to look into your local communities to get involved. 

Alongside composting, we need to think about rescuing food before it is spoiled. Edible foods should be consumed so that they do not need to be composted or end up in a landfill in the first place. The largest category of food that needs to be rescued comes from the food industry: manufacturers, wholesalers, restaurants, and caterers. This food doesn’t get purchased at grocery stores and doesn't make it to the consumer for one reason or another. Generally, there is no financial incentive or legal requirement for the food industry to create and run food rescue programs on their own and unsold or unused food is simply thrown out. If the food industry and local governments invested in a large-scale food rescue program, it would not only save food, but create hundreds of employment opportunities. 

Michigan food rescue groups like Food Gatherers, Forgotten Harvest and Gleaners play a crucial role in recovering and redistributing edible food, especially to those who are food insecure. These rescue groups bridge the gap in the system by providing the labor and transportation needed for the food to be picked up, sorted, and delivered to soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters, schools, and other institutions before they become spoiled. Saving fresh perishable foods requires systems that are locally rooted to ensure that the food stays edible. Many food rescue groups are nonprofit organizations and rely heavily on volunteers. Getting involved with a local food rescue group is one way to make a big difference while making new friends who similarly care about saving food. 

If volunteering is not possible for you, think about donating or getting a group together to donate to food rescue groups and food drives. For example, Hunger Free Summer is a campaign by Gleaners to ensure that kids in southeast Michigan do not go hungry. Every donation is matched, so $1 becomes $2, which is enough for six healthy meals for kids. 

Getting involved with local organizations can help you get started when you want to do something to protect Michigan’s beautiful landscapes from becoming a trash mountain. 

Participating in Your Local Composting Program or Starting Your Own Home Compost Helps Prevent Food Waste.

While composting has gained popularity in the last few years, getting started can still feel daunting to many people. The first thing you can do is call your local municipal offices to ask what kind of local composting programs are available. As a local matter, your city can tell you if there are any city-run or county-run composting programs. City-run composting programs can be similar to the trash and recycling programs we’re all already familiar with. It makes participation easy, especially for people who feel they do not have space or capacity to run their own home compost. If there are no programs available, this is an opportunity for you to let your city know your interest in one. Your phone call could lead to the city establishing one. 

Home composting is not just for those who have a large backyard. It can also be done in your apartment — there are many composting containers on the market now that are designed for apartment and condo communities. Unlike composting programs, home composting requires more knowledge, time, and financial investments, but it ensures that you always have access to composting. One obstacle to composting in an apartment is that you may not have a garden to use the compost you created. Some places have local compost collection programs that will take that compost off your hands to be distributed to farms and home gardeners. You can also reach out to neighbors, friends, and local farms yourself to find those who want to take it off your hands. 

For example, I take my food waste to a friend’s house to be added to their home compost because I do not have the space at my current home for my own compost. I simply separate my food waste and keep it in the freezer until I take it over to their home. This requires no initial financial or time investments for me and adding my food waste does not add any extra labor or burden on my friend. It gives us a reason to get together regularly while we prevent more organic materials from ending up in the landfill. 

Join The Fight Against Landfill Methane

We at the Ecology Center are encouraging you to make “trash” the hot topic in your neighborhood and/or friend groups. Take a moment to talk to them about food waste issues and composting. Getting your local community involved is a way to remove obstacles and to find solutions that are easier and more effective. It can provide new reasons to support and care for each other. 

Join the fight by finding one small action you can take. If home composting is currently not an option for you, make sure that all of the food you purchase is eaten and not thrown out. Talking about what you learned from this article to your friends and neighbors can also contribute to the fight. Let’s work together to stop Michigan from continuing to be the land of landfills filled with smelly food waste. 

4 Ways to Start Taking Actions: 

1. Learn about your local waste reduction options.
2. Advocate for composting at your work and school.
3. Start a collective composting project with your family, friends, or neighbors.
4. Donate and Volunteer for food rescue groups. 

A Day of Action at the Capitol

On September 10, members of the Ecology Center joined partners from the Michigan Energy, Michigan Jobs (MEMJ) coalition at the State Capitol in Lansing.

Our Capitol Day of Action brought together advocates, community members, and experts for face-to-face meetings with legislators. Ecology Center staff and coalition partners spoke directly about the challenges Michigan households face: rising energy bills, unreliable power, children’s daily exposure to diesel exhaust, and the lack of dependable transit options that connect people to jobs and services.

One of the central issues raised in these conversations was the need for clear budget priorities. Coalition members stressed that Michigan’s budget must reflect the needs of its people rather than the interests of polluters. Their remarks underscored that this debate is not simply about line items or allocations, but about the state’s long-term direction. The presence of the MEMJ coalition at the Capitol made clear that communities are watching closely and expect Lansing to invest in solutions that make a tangible difference.

What We Are Calling For

The Ecology Center and our partners in the MEMJ coalition are urging legislators to invest in Michigan’s healthy climate future. That means expanding home weatherization and electrification programs, especially for rural households that still rely on expensive delivered fuels. It means restoring and expanding funding for public transit so that buses and trains across the state are modern, affordable, and reliable. It means supporting job training and workforce development programs that prepare Michigan workers for the clean energy jobs of tomorrow. It also requires protecting public health by continuing to fund lead service line replacements, water affordability programs, and the monitoring of air quality so that families can breathe safely.

We also call on lawmakers not to penalize electric vehicles and fuel-efficient cars in efforts to raise new revenues for road repairs. As our recent analysis shows, such penalties would undermine Michigan’s clean energy transition and discourage consumers from making climate-smart choices.

The Senate and Governor’s budget proposals include many of these priorities, and the task ahead is to ensure that the final budget sustains investments in community health, clean energy and workforce development rather than impose severe cuts or prohibitions.

Why This Matters Now

Michigan already experiences some of the most frequent and prolonged power outages in the Midwest, while households here pay among the region’s higher electric rates. Air pollution from fossil fuels costs the state billions of dollars every year in health impacts. More than six hundred thousand Michigan students ride diesel school buses each day, breathing in exhaust that worsens asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Michigan children continue to be exposed to lead causing lifelong damage. If Michigan fails to invest in community health, electrification, workforce development, and transit, we risk falling behind and undermining our long-term competitiveness.

Investing in community health, clean energy, electrification, and public transit is not a luxury. It is a necessity for safe, affordable, and thriving communities across Michigan.

The House Proposal: Roads First, Communities Left Behind

Just days before our Capitol Day, the Michigan House released its version of the state budget. The plan pours billions of dollars into road funding while making sweeping cuts to health, workforce, and environmental protections. In its current form, the House proposal eliminates key workforce and clean energy programs such as Going PRO and the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification, reduces support for lead service line replacement and air quality monitoring, and strips away contaminated site cleanup funding.

Additionally, the House version of the budget will make egregious cuts to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Lead Division. The proposed 30 million dollar reduction will cut 40 important jobs, eliminating the nurse case management program which serves over 5,800 lead-poisoned kids yearly. The work of the MDHHS Lead Division has been invaluable in protecting Michigan children from lead exposure and helping families when lead exposure has occurred. Michiganders deserve a budget that serves the people. Not one that saves money by taking away community resources and harming community health.  

Transit funding also falls short. While the House budget maintains baseline bus operating support and creates a new pool of money tied to “efficiency” requirements, it cuts support for critical regional transit services, including the Regional Transit Authority in Southeast Michigan. Most troubling, the House plan prohibits the purchase or lease of electric vehicles for the state fleet — a move that directly undermines Michigan’s role as a national leader in advanced mobility. These choices create a false tradeoff: better roads at the expense of healthy communities. Michigan can and must do both.

Your Voice Matters

Our Capitol Day of Action was a powerful reminder that legislators listen when communities show up. But this is only the beginning. With negotiations between the House, Senate, and Governor still underway, there is time to shape the outcome. Every call, every story, and every letter matters in ensuring that Michigan’s budget reflects the needs of its people.

We encourage members to contact their legislators, to share experiences of power outages or high bills, and to speak about the importance of clean energy, reliable transit, and clean air in their daily lives. The voices raised at the Capitol on September 10 can be amplified if more Michiganders join in calling for a budget that puts communities first.

Michigan faces a choice: a budget that leaves families and workers behind, or a balanced approach that delivers affordable energy, clean air, reliable transit, and good jobs. With your help, we can ensure our state chooses the future we deserve — a future that is healthy and resilient.

Further Information

• Detroit Free Press. GOP state budget includes billions in cuts. Here’s what would get axed. (2025)
• Ecology Center. Prioritizing Clean Energy & Transportation for Thriving Michigan Communities. (2025)
• Power Michigan Forward. Handout on clean energy and transportation priorities. (2025)
• Ecology Center. Road Funding analysis: EVs and Hybrids Are Not To Blame for Road Funding Losses. (2025)

By Trilby MacDonald, Ecology Center Writer

Michigan leads the nation in clean energy job growth. This is a ray of hope in a rust belt state hard hit by auto industry layoffs. These high-paying jobs were made possible by groundbreaking investments during the Biden administration, most notably through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. In fact, Michigan has received more federal dollars for clean energy projects than any other state. Private, state and local government investments soon followed, with businesses pouring billions into new projects.

In 2023, Michigan lawmakers answered this federal investment with landmark clean energy legislation known as the Clean Energy & Jobs Act, establishing a target of 100% clean energy by 2040, and 60% renewable energy by 2035.  In passing this historic legislation, the Governor and legislature intentionally sought to maximize and leverage the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity made possible by the federal government’s clean energy investments.

But the Trump administration’s climate funding freeze and tariffs policy, followed by the OBBBA budget bill in Congress, have killed projects and created financial uncertainty.  Polls clearly show that Michiganders from both parties want energy independence, emissions reduction, and economic revitalization. To break the political deadlock that now stands in the way, it’s vital to set the record straight about the costs and benefits of clean energy. 

Government investment pays for itself

Many of America’s best inventions were made possible by public money. Without it, Michigan’s auto industry would not have become the envy of the world. Clean energy and low-carbon innovation is no different--from solar cells and wind power technology to electric vehicles and biofuels, government investment has powered the research and development that has allowed these industries to lead the global marketplace. Our robust supply chain, natural resources, top research universities, and skilled workforce make Michigan an ideal place to build on that legacy. That’s why the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invested $28 billion in Michigan’s clean energy sector. Michigan’s Clean Energy & Jobs Act builds on that investment with state-level incentives and regulatory reforms that promote renewable energy development and require utilities to invest more heavily in renewable and other clean energy technologies. 

The private sector took note, investing an additional $27.85 billion in clean energy projects, according to Climate Power. New development includes large-scale solar farms in rural counties, EV battery plants in Mid-Michigan, and innovation hubs in Metro Detroit and Ann Arbor. While not all clean energy projects make it to the finish line, and some are now threatened, projects like these have already generated 26,000 good jobs in the state. 

But the economic benefits don’t end there. In 2023, over 117,000 Michigan households received $134 million in energy tax credits through the IRA, saving an average of $1,143 per household. That’s money that stays in the economy and creates high paying jobs in construction, retrofitting, and solar installation. Tax credits for home energy efficiency and would have remained in place until 2030, credits for electric vehicles until 2032, and credits for installing rooftop solar panels and home battery storage until 2034. But the GOP’s Big Beautiful Bill cancelled all of that. If you want to get a federal tax credit for buying an EV, you have to act before the end of September; for installing solar and home energy efficiency upgrades, before December 31, 2025. 

Luckily, Michigan Home Energy Rebates (MiHER) for efficiency and electrification upgrades will remain in place. Homeowners can get up to $20,000 for efficiency upgrades like insulation, air sealing, and HVAC improvements.  They can receive an additional $14,000 for efficient electric appliances, wiring upgrades, and heat pumps.

Cleaner Air, Healthier Communities

The human costs of air pollution never appear on corporate balance sheets. According to the American Lung Association, Michigan ranks among the worst states for air-quality-related illness, much of it due to dirty energy production. Research done by University of Michigan School of Public Health reveals that in the Detroit area, outdoor air pollution is responsible for an estimated 721 premature deaths, 1,500 hospitalizations, and over 200,000 days with respiratory symptoms among children with asthma each year. These symptoms have led to 500,000 days of missed work and more than 990,000 days of missed school.  That translates to $7.3 Billion in lost productivity and learning that Detroiters will never get back. Cleaner energy and vehicles would greatly help to reduce these harmful emissions, particularly for PM2.5, NO₂, and SO₂, improving respiratory health and reducing hospitalizations and missed days at work and school. 

Reliability and Resilience

Clean energy is proving to be not only better for our health and our wallets, but also more reliable than fossil fuels. As our electric grid faces swiftly growing demand from AI, higher temperatures, and harsh winter storms, new research shows that a cleaner system can actually perform better. Studies by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and Energy Innovation confirm that the U.S. can reach up to 80% clean electricity without sacrificing grid stability.

In Michigan, power outages have increased 78% over the last two decades, and utilities are asking for an average of 12% in rate hikes to pay for the next round of grid improvements. Surplus energy generated by solar panels does not rely on utility companies’ long distance transmission systems.  Instead, it largely travels on the local distribution system to the nearest building, relieving strain on the grid and reducing the need for expensive upgrades. And while fossil fuel advocates often argue for natural gas as a more reliable fuel source, those systems have repeatedly failed in cold temperatures. During Winter Storm Elliott in 2022, a staggering 86% of outages were caused by coal and gas system breakdowns. Just a year earlier, Winter Storm Uri revealed the same vulnerabilities in Texas, where gas shortages and frozen plants prolonged statewide blackouts by days.

Clean energy sources such as solar and wind are proving to be more resilient than fossil fuels in times of stress. When paired with battery storage, solar power provides reliable energy independent of the grid.  It’s also insulated from global price shocks and supply chain disruptions that make fossil fuels so volatile. In a time when energy independence has become a catchphrase of advocates for the fossil fuel industry, solar power is proving to be the cheapest, safest, and most reliable way to achieve it. 

Federal Funding Freeze Leaves Michigan in the Cold

In January 2025, the federal Office of Management and Budget ordered federal agencies to halt all funding for climate-related projects, despite questionable authority to withhold funds approved by Congress. Court orders have sought and sometimes been successful in resuming the flow of these authorized funds, many projects have been canceled while these cases work their way through the legal system. 

A Michigan Public report found nearly $21 billion worth of clean energy tax credits, upgrades, manufacturing, and loan guarantees were cancelled because of decisions made by the Trump administration. As a result, many companies are pausing hiring, canceling builds, and re-evaluating Michigan as a place to do business. 

California-based chip manufacturer SanDisc recently announced that it is pulling out of a planned $55 billion facility in Genesee County that could have created up to 10,000 jobs in the area. The company cited economic uncertainty, federal policy shifts, and tariffs as the major factors.  In February, Nel Hydrogen’s planned electrolyzer manufacturing facility in Plymouth—expected to bring $400 million and create over 500 jobs—was put on hold. The company cited IRA tax credit uncertainty as a major concern.

Navigating Local Concerns While Advancing Statewide Energy Goals

Opposition from townships and agricultural groups concerned about property rights and local land use would also impede Michigan’s progress in reaching its clean energy goals.  The Clean Energy & Jobs Act gave the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) the authority to override local ordinances prohibiting solar and wind farms, and to take control of the siting process if local governments exceed statewide guidelines.  In 2025, several bills were introduced to repeal or roll back the state’s clean energy siting law, but those have so far been unsuccessful.  

The Ecology Center has been a leading voice defending Michigan’s 2023 clean energy legislation while advocating for balanced policies that protect both property owners and renewable energy growth. A streamlined siting process is essential to overcoming local barriers that have historically stalled renewable energy development.

By investing in renewables, Michigan is building true energy independence. While Michigan isn’t Nevada, it receives enough free sunlight to power every home and car—if we choose to invest. Doing so won’t just reduce infrastructure and energy costs; it will pay dividends in the form of high-quality jobs. The global solar industry is booming, and foreign companies are racing ahead. Michigan has all the attributes to lead: a strong supply chain, renowned research universities, and a skilled workforce. Yet, according to the U.S. Energy Climate Report, more than four in five clean energy employers struggle to fill open positions.

Homegrown energy sources like solar and wind are abundant, domestic, and stable in both price and reliability. When paired with advanced battery storage, they provide a steady supply of power—and greater resilience to global disruptions. 

It’s hard to have a rational debate about an issue as politicized as clean energy. But the facts remain: voters consistently back policies that deliver lower energy bills, better health, more jobs, and national self-relliance. Slashing clean energy programs now would not only undercut economic progress, but also defy the will of voters who want energy independence. 

Clean energy has created more than 26,000 jobs in Michigan, including over 10,000 in solar. Federal programs have driven this progress. When governments operate at full potential, they provide the scale and patience to fund breakthroughs in every sector. Nearly every transformative innovation begins with public investment. When government delivers healthier, safer, more prosperous communities, it fulfills its purpose. As global leaders recognize the universal benefits of renewable energy, Michigan can lead the transition and build a future as bright as the sun.

By Andrea Jacoby, Ecology Center Environmental Storyteller Fellow

I love to paint my nails. If you ever meet me, you will never catch me with my nails unpolished. An average bottle of nail polish contains enough lacquer for about 20 manicures — some have a little more, some have less. We don’t need to do exact math, but suffice it to say that I have more than enough nail polish to last multiple decades of my life even if I changed my polish every single day. I know this fact, but I don’t often have to directly confront it. The other day, though, I was working on a DIY project that required me to pull all the polish out from one of my storage containers (there are several). Believe it or not, this pile is actually less than ¼ of the number of bottles I own overall.

There’s no shame in liking things, and there’s no shame in buying them. While I don’t feel any particular shame about my nail polish collection — I use polish very often and love to share it with my friends — I think it goes without saying that this is some pretty significant overconsumption, in a way that doesn’t feel entirely consistent with my values. Although I try to be thoughtful about my consumption, I have accumulated more than I need and more than I will likely ever be able to use. 

How did this happen? Like many people who find themselves in these kinds of patterns, it started online. I saw other people wearing pretty colors and I wanted them for myself. Essentially, I was influenced, even when that wasn’t the explicit intention of the posts I was seeing. Influencers encourage you to imagine yourself as the kind of person who looks and acts in the specific way they are selling. When the fantasy is appealing enough, we buy the products we are told can make us this way too, often available on websites like TikTok Shop, Amazon, and Shein that push hyper-consumerism. Influencing tries to convince you not only to buy the products available, but to believe that your life is incomplete without buying them, and that your life and you as a person will be better — more beautiful, more stylish, more organized, cleaner, happier, cooler, whatever — if and when you do. The relationship that influence — be it through social media, celebrities, or even friends — encourages me to have with my things is not the relationship with my things that I planned to have, nor the one I really want to have.

Influencing is big business: the influencer marketing industry is projected to reach $32.55 billion this year. It’s incredibly easy to want things online, especially when you see how lovely other people can make them look, and it takes very little effort to make the things you see online appear in your house. But wanting and needing are two different things, and in a culture that works hard to incentivize buying lots of things without truly thinking about their impact, many people are looking for an alternative. Enter: the de-influencer.

What is de-influencing?

The main goal of de-influencing is to encourage people to think more carefully about the things they’re buying, or about the act of buying itself. In essence, this is an exercise in mindfulness: de-influencing asks us to put real thought into our values in life and consider whether buying this thing moves us toward or away from those values. Buying things doesn’t help us to be fundamentally different people, and when we consider those values, it becomes obvious that buying cool or cute or maybe even genuinely useful items, generally speaking, doesn’t help us become better or more fulfilled people.

For some de-influencers, this means discouraging buying altogether. Other de-influencers mainly offer honest feedback about products that don’t work very well — and there are plenty of those that abound on TikTok. Jenna, Ecology Center Digital Coordinator, told me about an example from her own life:

I bought a vegetable chopper off of TikTok Shop. I hate cutting vegetables, so the idea of putting a whole veggie in the chopper and just closing the lid seemed too good to be true. Well, turns out it was too good to be true. I used it one time before realizing the process took just as long as cutting by hand, and cleaning the contraption took significantly longer than washing a knife and cutting board. I promptly gifted it on my Buy Nothing Facebook Group and took this as a reminder that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Often, de-influencers encourage us to pause before we buy and consider whether an item is really necessary. “You don’t need it, you want it” is one of the most common points in de-influencing videos, and with a little training, it becomes second nature to pause before buying to ask. “Do I need that spin mop, or do I just want it because it looks so nice when I see other people using it? Yes, I want it, but I have a mop already that works fine. I don’t even do the mopping in my house, my partner does!” “Do I want all the things in my fridge to look pretty and organized in neat plastic containers? Sure, but I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and suddenly become the kind of person who decants my eggs from the (paper, biodegradable) carton into a clear acrylic carton.” When I stop to think about it, I have time to recognize that the acrylic fridge bins create pointless labor that I know I won’t sustain, won’t improve my life or really make a difference at all, will feed a relentless demand for unnecessary plastic items, and solve a problem that doesn’t even really exist — so far, no one who has ever seen the inside of my refrigerator has commented on how not-perfectly-coordinated it is.

What’s the problem with overconsumption?

Before any of the stuff we buy makes its way to us, it has an enormous environmental impact that we mostly don’t notice because all of the manufacturing happens so far from us. Raw materials have to be produced, shipped to manufacturers who make it into products we’re then convinced to want, and then shipped to us when we make our purchases. At every point along the supply chain, fossil fuels are being produced and potential contaminants are making their way into the ecosystem. When we are finished with these items, we often throw them away to break down in landfills without considering whether we could repair or repurpose them. 

The convenience of online shopping, in practice, produces a lot of real inconvenience. Even things we will use up can present problems, as we are pushed to “stock up” on items before we run out and somehow end up with more than we need. Ecology Center Writer, Yuki has a collection of Japanese stationery and still feels tempted to buy more:

Over-engineered pens, post-its, washi tape, planners, etc. on Jetpens, its free shipping for 35 dollars so I always end up buying that amount. Because it's imported it's also all marked up. I can get them when I go to Japan, but during the pandemic when I couldn’t, it pushed me to start buying them here. Now with the tariffs (+ I don’t have immediate plans to go to Japan), part of me wants to “stock up” before it gets more expensive even though I don’t need any new items. (I haven’t bought it yet, but instagram keeps telling me to buy a candle warmer, mechanical keyboards, and “high-end”? / weighted sweatpants. These three are very tempting since they all feel functional, but in reality I don’t need any of them).

I can’t judge: I have more collections than just nail polish. I also have stashes of scented candles, shoes, books, and jigsaw puzzles. Storing these items nicely requires buying more things to hold them so they’re neat and organized and out of the way, and as a grad student who will eventually move away, moving them will require expending more labor and fuel for their transport. These issues become a part of the mental load I carry, affecting my mental state by constantly nagging in the background.

As a concrete example, the vast majority of the fast fashion items we’re encouraged to purchase to fit in with the latest micro-trend are made of polyester, most of which is made from petroleum byproducts that dissolve in the wash and leave microplastics in our water supply. Getting them to us burns vast quantities of fossil fuels since most clothing is manufactured overseas. We buy everything we want at disturbingly cheap prices and then run out of room to store our clothes in our houses, forcing us to do “closet cleanouts.” When we are finished with them, these microplastics further break down in our landfills if we throw them away. Even donating them does not mitigate their environmental cost: donated clothing will still produce polluting microplastics when new owners wear and wash it, and there is such an overabundance of donated clothing that much of it is thrown away anyway, sometimes even after being exported overseas. We can’t just not buy clothes, but we can reduce the impact by considering whether the things we buy are likely to be things we can wear for a long time instead of throwing them away after one season. The best option is to not buy them in the first place if we don’t really need them.

A Note on Micro-Trends

The trend cycle has accelerated rapidly since the rise of TikTok around 2019. It takes practically no time for trends to take off on TikTok, driving huge demand for featured items. Where in past decades, short-lived fads faded away over the course of a season or two, in the 2020s it seems that items trending on TikTok are already almost out of style in the amount of time it takes to ship them to your house. Much of what de-influencers try to do is encourage us to ask whether the things we buy — fashion, decorative items, electronics, home furnishings, and so on — will end up in a landfill sooner or later (the later the better). 

We all give into trends sometimes — this isn’t a bad or shameful thing. It’s normal to want to fit in with peers, and buying and having things that are in style feels great, psychologically speaking. Rachana, our graphic designer, realized as we were discussing our overconsumption habits that she has at times been influenced to buy things that she actually likes:  

I did end up buying a pair of Adidas Spezials just because I got a bunch of Instagram reels of people wearing them and they looked so good! I was influenced by their “aesthetic.” I don’t regret buying them since they're so comfortable, but I was clearly influenced into making that purchase. 

Personally, I sprung for the Lenox Spice Village (which I think is fun even if it’s not my usual style) and the Ikea Varmblixt donut lamp (which very much is my style). I love them both and plan to enjoy them for many years to come, but I am aware that they will feel very emblematic of a specific time and place in not very much time. If you’re going to spring for micro-trends, it would be important to ask yourself and be very honest about whether you plan to still use what you buy after the trend passes.

How You Can Break Free of Overconsumption

Overconsumption is often spurred by marketing designed to make you feel that you shouldn’t be satisfied by what you already have. It makes you believe that living better is a matter of always buying something new, always buying something better, and always buying more. 

The simplest way to reduce your overconsumption is to get in the habit of asking yourself questions before making a purchase. Ask yourself:

• Is this something I really need, or is it something I want?
• How many times am I likely to use this thing?
• Is this something I could borrow or rent instead of buying?
• Do I actually like this thing, or am I being encouraged to like it because other people seem to like it?
• Do I already have a version of this thing, and will this version really be that different from what I already have?
• If this item is consumable, am I genuinely about to run out, or do I already have more than I can use?
• Am I buying things because of my mood, or other reasons that have little to do with the thing?
• Am I being motivated by marketing tricks like “limited editions” or sales that don’t actually save me money?
• Did I go into this shop because I needed something, or was I looking for something to want?
• Does this fit into the lifestyle I actually have, or does it make a lot of work for me to try to change my lifestyle? Am I willing to do that work for the long term? 

While these questions are great for helping us through individual purchases, buying things is not the sole problem. There will always be some things we need to buy, and things we buy that we want but don’t really need. Cultivating contentment is a  longer-term solution that addresses the root causes of overconsumption. Finding satisfaction in the things we already have and making room for meaningful experiences that align with our values can help break the cycle of overconsumption.

• Take last year’s fall wardrobe and make up new outfits.
• Rearrange your furniture so that the room feels brand new.
• Treat yourself to an experience instead of an item, like taking a walk around your neighborhood.
• Cook a new recipe.
• Play an old favorite game 

Ultimately, if we work to buy less stuff and encourage others to do the same, we will end up living happier, healthier, and more sustainable lives.

A Few De-Influencers to Follow

There are many reasons why you might still want trend content in your social feeds. Even though I’m on a nail polish no-buy, I still enjoy watching polish videos on YouTube, looking at pictures on Instagram, and reading people’s posts on Reddit. However, it’s much easier to resist buying when anti-consumption and de-influencing content is integrated into those feeds, reminding me to appreciate what I already have. If you want to bring de-influencing content into your feeds, here are a few recommendations for content creators that some of the folks in the office like:

• On TikTok, videos tagged #deinfluencing and #underconsumption tend to fit this category, like these examples:
  • Grayson Smith (de influencing isn’t her main mission but this video is of de-influencing)
  • Mikealla Wegner (again, just this video, not the whole page)
• One TikToker who consistently posts content in this area is @ladyleahmarie on TikTok, who focuses on sustainable fashion, and recently posted about Organized Hoarding
• On Instagram, you can follow accounts like @overcoming_overspending. Paige Pritchard runs a whole de-influencing program that grew from her own experience of shopping addiction (and she also has a TikTok!)
• I love Shawna Ripari’s YouTube channel for long-form de-influencing content, and would especially like to highlight her recent videos “how overconsumption is ACTUALLY normalized on tiktok” and “the radical act of being content.”
   

The Ecology Center and Clear the Air are backing two new bills aimed at protecting communities already burdened by excessive air pollution from hosting additional polluting industries.

The Protecting Overburdened Communities Act — SB 479 and HB 4742 — would require the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) to assess current pollution levels before issuing new permits in affected neighborhoods.

“These are communities on the front lines that suffer from the combined effects of heavy industry, diesel exhaust from trucks and trains, and other sources of pollution,” said Kathryn Savoie, Director of Equity and Environmental Justice at the Ecology Center.

Senator Stephanie Chang, who represents District 3 in metro Detroit and sponsors the Senate bill, says the legislation is critical for parts of her district already facing significant environmental burdens. “EGLE would have to take into account the health hazards the community is currently experiencing and how the new facility’s emissions would combine with existing pollution before granting a permit,” Sen. Chang said. “This is common sense and the right thing to do for our overburdened communities.”

State Representative Donavan McKinney, the House bill sponsor and a lifelong Detroiter, was diagnosed with asthma at a young age. “For far too long, low-income residents and communities of color have borne an unfair burden of pollution, leading to chronic health disparities,” Rep. McKinney said. “This legislation is about ensuring that every Michigander, regardless of their zip code, has the fundamental right to breathe clean air and drink clean water.”

The new legislation comes at a time when federal efforts to weaken clean air protections threaten to reverse decades of progress. Recent moves to dismantle key pollution safeguards could make state-level protections even more urgent.

Advocates have launched a campaign website, cleartheairmi.org/poca, where residents can learn more and show support.

The full press conference is available on Engage Michigan’s Facebook page.

Watch a short Instagram video about the press conference and the Protecting Overburdened Communities Act from the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition. 

By Yuki Nakayama, Ecology Center Writer

The More Life, Less Stuff campaign is a call on everyone to continually think about what it means to center life over consumer goods. Seasonal changes can impact how and what we prioritize in our everyday lives. When the weather is warmer, I tend to spend more time “outside,” such as choosing to sit outside at a restaurant, swimming at a lake, and attending a backyard BBQ party.

Spending time outside, especially doing a nature-centered activity, is frequently noted as a key factor to a healthy lifestyle. Japanese concepts like Shinrin-ryoku, or forest bathing, have become popular in wellness communities. When we think someone has spent too much time online, we frequently say “go touch some grass,” where nature is the icon for the non-virtual world, a tangible physical reality, something that grounds us to the present moment and offers a reset for our minds and bodies. 

I work for the Ecology Center, but I confess, I am not an “outdoorsy” person. While everyone at the EC cares about keeping our planet healthy, not all of us are eager about nature-centered outdoor activities. I don’t enjoy long hikes or camping. But this does not mean that I dislike all nature. Many people seem to hold a relatively strict hierarchy of what qualifies as ‘nature’ or ‘outdoor’ experiences.   

Until recently I  assumed I was not reaping the health benefits of nature due to my own “laziness.” It was one of those “I know it's good for you, but…” things I didn't actively choose to do. But I always wondered if the positive effects of nature were truly limited to specific types of activities. 

Writing an article for the More Life, Less Stuff campaign was the perfect reason for me to finally explore this question. I met with Dr. Jason Duvall, an environmental psychologist who teaches at the University of Michigan, to talk to an expert on the subject. Dr. Duvall teaches a first-year seminar titled, “Prescription Nature: How Nature Contact Enhances Health” (ENVIRON 139), an upper-level course on sustainability and health (ENVIRON 308), and many other courses at the university that focus on the impacts of environments on our health and well-being. Prior to speaking with him, I was expecting him to say something akin to “spend x amount of time outside at least three times a week to gain any health benefits.” But what he shared was, in fact, nothing like that.

I came out of the interview feeling tranquil and healed in ways I never expected. Learning that there are many ways to access nature’s health benefits without additional efforts or dramatic lifestyle changes was really powerful for me. As a disabled person with chronic conditions, for the first time in a long time, the health advice wasn’t about how my best efforts are still not enough. Instead, it made me aware of all of the ways nature already supports my well-being. 

Restorative Nature Is All Around Us

Dr. Duvall explained that “You do not have to like or enjoy nature to benefit from its restorative power. It also doesn’t have to be ‘real’ nature.” When Dr. Duvall said this during our conversation, I was shocked. It felt too good to be true, but he smiled and reassured me that many studies support it. 

While an enjoyable nature experience might enhance benefits, there is good reason to believe that restorative outcomes can result from even mundane nature contact. Dr. Duvall mentioned a study done in harsh winter weather that still showed time spent in nature led to the same health benefits as warm weather.

However, Dr. Duvall emphasized that nature is a broad category that includes many things. Camping, bushcraft style, or going on multi-hour hikes are not the only nature-centered activities. There are many mundane encounters with nature in our daily lives. You might already have nature in your home if you have pets; animal therapy is one part of nature’s restorative properties.  

We Are The Worst Judges of Our Stress Levels

Before we go into more details, we need to understand that humans are often not equipped to assess our own stress levels or accurately predict what activities best aid recovery. In many instances, we may not be cognitively aware of how tired or rested we are. This is not to invalidate how our bodies feel to us; it tells us that there are many functions of the body that operate behind the scenes, which are rarely cognitively recognizable. If we were fully aware of every aspect of our system, it would limit what we can do. Different operations have varying processing demands on the brain. For example, if we needed to think about breathing actively, that would consume most of our attention, making it difficult to do anything else with our time. The fact that we do not have to think about things like breathing allows our brain to focus our attention on other aspects of our lives. 

Similarly, constantly feeling the impacts of stress or fatigue would require us to spend our active attention and energy on prioritizing our safety to survive. While our body is continually processing various internal and external elements we encounter, it is important that many of those operations are done without our conscious awareness. Also, our contemporary lifestyles require a lot of cognitive processing, especially related to mental and psychological stressors in our individual lives. 

We are also unable to accurately identify the restorative effects of activities. This can lead to repeated engagement in an activity that we do for rest and leisure, which may only have limited or no restorative properties. For example, many of us watch TV shows, scroll our social media feeds, or play video games after a long day at work to relax. Dr. Duvall explained that these activities are fun and entertaining, but do not provide the restorative health benefits nature offers. These activities capture our attention, but they introduce new cognitive processing demands that make it harder to recover from mental and physical stress. In many instances, we tend to conflate entertainment with rest, which can result in pushing ourselves to physical and mental burn out because we are not using the most effective methods.

Restorative Effects of Nature

Dr. Duvall used the term “restorative effects” frequently to explain the broad spectrum of health benefits nature has. One major positive impact of nature is in how it engages with our brain’s processing mechanism. In the most simplistic terms, nature is restorative because it gives our brain space to process things in a slower and less complicated way. Contemporary society centered on digital technology and human-made materials (including buildings) requires more of our brains to process. When we see part of a tree branch, our brains know what to expect beyond what we do not see — our brains can make sense of this sensory information more easily and do less extra work. Our brains can make sense of this sensory information more easily and do less extra work. This is called perceptual fluency. But in non-natural spaces, this is often not the case. If you saw a small part of a concrete building, it is not clear whether what’s outside of that frame is also concrete. It may be brick, wood, or some windows or metal frames. The uncertainty of this may not seem like a big issue, but our brains are constantly working in the background filling in those missing gaps to ensure safe navigation in our daily lives. Think of it as your computer’s processor: If you run a ton of software that requires heavy use of memory, it can make your computer run slower than if you had one simple program running. 

Nature not only reduces the cognitive requirements of our brain, but offers what environmental psychologists call “Soft fascination.” There are two types of attention: voluntary (also called directed) vs. involuntary. Soft fascination falls under the involuntary category. Nature captures our involuntary attention while still leaving some room for other cognitive processing, unlike other activities. Because nature can gently capture attention, the remaining cognitive bandwidth can be used to consciously or subconsciously work on other issues. This is one reason why you might suddenly be able to come up with a solution to a problem you were facing when you go for a walk. It’s not just the physical movement or change in space, it’s the fact that you are engaging with something natural that provides the cognitive space necessary to attend to the task at hand, especially those that are more complex. 

The Spectrum of Restorative Benefits 

Nature has positive effects on our health, but the quality of its restorative effects is on a scale. Restorative benefits differ depending on our proximity (physically and conceptually) to nature. Going outside and being physically near nature is the most restorative because it requires less active effort to reduce the cognitive processing of our brains. The restorative effects decrease depending on the mode in which you engage with nature. 

Flowers I bought to display in my home will not have as powerful restorative effects as sitting in a big flower field. This is because in my home, there are many things that require my attention for that background cognitive processing, so I need to put in more active effort to not be distracted by them. There is more processing required by the brain, which decreases its restorative effects compared to being in the woods, but the key point is that it does not eliminate all of its restorative properties. The same applies to having a picture of flowers on your wall as opposed to having a bouquet of flowers on your table.  

Dr. Duvall repeatedly stated that restorative benefits can come from things as “far” from real nature as virtual representations. This is why some hospitals have incorporated virtually-created immersive spaces as methods to ease the stress levels of their employees and provide access to healing in a high stress workplace. Immersive recharge rooms are dimly lit quiet spaces that have physical objects and/or digital media that capture the user’s soft fascination. The images and sounds can be videos that simulate forest walks or abstract organic shapes (examples used at Michigan Medicine). In addition to physical spaces, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology is also being used to provide access to digitally created restorative environments.

Such immersive spaces and technologies are not just for lowering stress at work, they offer new ways of access and care for people with disabilities. Going out into nature is a privilege as many places remain inaccessible to the disabled community. Understanding the positive impacts as a scale allows us to think more inclusively about how we talk about healthy lifestyles.     

Many of us may feel we live “far” from nature, but we need to reconceptualize our understanding or our “proximity” to nature. There are studies that show that something as simple as taking the “scenic route” with views of nature while you are driving is restorative. Though we tend to prioritize efficiency and taking the shortest route, just spending a few extra minutes on your drive to/from work to take a route filled with views of nature is more crucial to our well-being than we imagined. The most shocking finding that Dr. Duvall mentioned was that just the presence of a park or a garden near where you live also provides benefits. There are studies that show neighborhoods with more greenery have better mental and physical health conditions across all ages of its residents than neighborhoods without any. 

Opening up processing capacity also has positive impacts on our bodies, like lowering heart rate and other health benefits. This leads to feeling better and positive holistically. It identifies the strong mind and body connection while reminding us that our body is a complex system that requires more energy and attention than we consciously assume for our daily activities.  Our lives may not offer the ability to spend weeks out in the woods for a full restorative experience that many of us need, but we can all start to incorporate more “micro restorative” moments into our lives. 

Academic and Behavioral Benefits For Kids

Access and proximity to nature not only impact our overall health, but academic and behavioral performances in children. There are differences between children with and without access to nature. Children with nature access perform better on standardized tests, have less behavior issues, and have a greater desire to go further in education. Closeness to nature can be as simple as having natural light in the classroom or being able to see nature outside the window. Access to nature in educational spaces is crucial as it leads to memory consolidation, which allows children to better retain and understand the information they learned.

Many studies also identify that regular time spent directly in nature has effects comparable to common ADHD medications, such as minimized symptoms and better attention test performance. This is not to discredit the effectiveness of medications and/or those who use it; medications are a crucial part of health care and offer many benefits that cannot be achieved with “natural” solutions. The results of these studies allow us to think about how we can use both methods — nature and medication — to gain the optimal effect for each individual. 

These studies ask us to consider whether our educational spaces and lifestyles are fully leveraging existing resources in our environments to support the safety and success of all children. With this information, parents can consider which room in their home to give to their children or what kind of spaces they can encourage their kids to spend time in when they do schoolwork. For example, studying for exams under natural light may be more worthwhile than studying at night. 

The Right To Nature 

Given all of these well-documented benefits, Dr. Duvall suggested that it might be time for us to treat access to nature as a human right. His statement reminds us that, sadly, access to nature (including the time and economic stability to spend time in nature) is limited for many people. We see more and more destruction of nature, be it cutting down forests or replacing parks with parking lots. Wealthier areas tend to have more plants and vibrant landscaping. Experiences away from urban city centers may not be financially accessible. If nature provides rich health benefits, it should not be behind a paywall. 

Enjoying the Gift of Nature

Studies have shown that being stewards of spaces has a high impact on individuals and communities. Such studies have led to the rise of “Civic ecology,” which focuses on educating people to become more involved with local and global environmental communities. It can be as simple as helping to organize a community garden: You as an individual gain rich health benefits while working to increase access to nature in your local community to increase collective well being. 

We have been lucky to live on a planet already abundant with natural resources. In the book The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, author Robin Wall Kimmer explores a regenerative human economy based on flow of gratitude and reciprocity (a currency of gifts) built on cooperation, community, and (re)cycles of our ecosystem. We do not have to prove our right to access the abundant gifts offered to us because “[t]his is a gift economy in reach of everyone. It’s subversive. And delicious.” 

Summer may almost be over, but there is still time to enjoy the beauty of your local area while the weather is still warm. But you do not have to fear the coming of winter, as you won’t have to find walking in the snow pleasurable to still benefit from its restorative power. Nature’s health benefits do not require a prescription from a doctor or an exact dosage. It’s available to us all year round. Take a moment to look around and find nature all around us. 

Guest blog by Jenny Miller, University of Michigan graduate student in the School of Environment and Sustainability and Ecology Center volunteer  

I have always been a no shoes, out-in-nature person. In fact, right before my high school graduation, I ditched my nice heels and headed into a creek to look for crustaceans. I have always had a passion for nature and animals, which led me to get my bachelor's degree in Zoology and work in environmental education. Now, I am pursuing a Masters in Environment and Sustainability. 

A few years ago, I moved to Michigan, a state whose culture is heavily influenced by the water of the Great Lakes. Living here opened my eyes to how water connects everyone. However, I still did not think much of the pollutants that contaminated many communities’ drinking water until Tony Spaniola, co-chair of the Great Lakes PFAS Action Network (GLPAN), gave a talk about PFAS in my water politics class. PFAS are a class of nearly 15,000 synthetic chemicals, commonly known as forever chemicals, that take thousands of years to break down in the environment. Even in low quantities, the PFAS chemicals that have been extensively studied are linked to ailments such as cancers, birth defects, and decreased immune response. I was shocked to learn that PFAS have been used in goods since the 1940s and are commonly found in nonstick pans, water resistant clothing, firefighting foam, and have even been found in cosmetics products. The PFAS in these products inevitably ends up in our drinking water, and  filtration systems cannot remove all PFAS from getting into our water. I wanted to be proactive about my own health and environmental impact and ensure the products I use are free of PFAS.

To start, I wanted to ensure that the beauty products I use in my everyday life are not adding PFAS into the water supply, but found it very difficult to find this information. With the Ecology Center’s support, I decided to go to Meijer and look at every body wash — nearly 120 body washes — to see which ones contained PFAS. It must have been an interesting sight as I went through the aisles taking pictures of each body wash product I could find. With the pictures in hand, I went home and compiled a list of the products. For each product, I searched online to see if I could find any information out there about whether or not they contain PFAS.

During my research, I was unable to find body washes that were explicitly identified to contain PFAS. Instead, I learned that in order to know for sure if a product contains PFAS, it has to be tested for specifically. Companies are not required to test if their products contain PFAS, and there is very limited information about items that both have and have not been tested. This means that just because a product is not known to contain PFAS, it does not necessarily mean that they are free from PFAS. This lack of information was frustrating to say the least, as there is no clear way for us as consumers to know whether a product is exposing us to these harmful chemicals.

The process of looking at brands was extremely time consuming, as it took me hours to go through hundreds of body washes at only one store. It should not take this much time and effort for consumers to make informed purchases since the average consumer does not have the amount of time and resources I had. Especially since there is not enough information out there for a consumer to truly make an informed decision.

I found that an effective way for consumers to limit their PFAS exposure from cosmetic products is to focus on finding which products test for PFAS and do not contain any. I found the websites Green Science Policy and EWG to be extremely helpful with finding products that are PFAS-free. However, this is not a perfect solution. 

We cannot shop our way out of PFAS, and a way to help everyone in limiting their exposure to PFAS is to get laws passed that limit their use. In order to make our concerns known, contact your state representatives and tell them to push forward legislation that holds brands accountable for putting PFAS in their products. There have been bills proposed previously in the state of Michigan that would help limit people’s exposure to PFAS. The bill “The Hazardous Products Act” that was introduced in Michigan  would ban the intentional use of PFAS in products such as cookware, cosmetics, children’s products, and firefighting foam. Another bill is the “PFAS Product Labeling Bill,” which would require companies to provide notices or warnings if products contain PFAS. Bills such as these can truly help make a difference by reducing the amount PFAS that we are exposed to and help keep our community safe. 

This experience made me aware of the difficulty in identifying products that contain PFAS, and how one person does not have the capacity to do it all. As consumers we should work collectively to voice our concerns surrounding PFAS not only to our representatives, but also to the companies that produce them. Our voices can make a difference in stopping the use of PFAS. 

For more resources check out: 

EWG Skin Deep

Toxics Free Future

Mind the Store 

Green Science Policy 

Green Screen Certified products 

By Crystal Zanders, More Life, Less Stuff Freelance Writer 

As I’ve settled into my forties, I have been thinking a lot about retirement. For a long time, it wasn’t something that I could see myself doing. I like working, and I want to do it as long as I can. I find connection and community in my work, especially when I am teaching. I want my life to be filled with passion and purpose.

So, I was excited when, as part of the More Life, Less Stuff series, I had the opportunity to speak with some activists who are using their retirements to make a difference. Catherine Daggila from Third Act and Jan Wright from the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice gave me a new perspective on what my later years might look like. Both organizations give seniors opportunities to collectively address some of the most important social issues of our time. 

Connecting Faith Communities to fight Climate Change

Jan Wright chairs the Caucus on Consumption, Waste, and the Climate Crisis within The Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice (ICPJ). This is a small group of retirees who promote opportunities for activism within the congregations associated with ICPJ. They work with City Council in Ann Arbor and local government agencies to promote waste-reduction and recycling, partnering with other groups in our community. For example, they are members of the Washtenaw Zero Waste Coalition and the Food Waste and Packaging Policy Action Team. According to Jan, this caucus has focused on “food consumption, what you eat, and how that affects the climate,” and “food waste, which has a huge impact on climate.”

Jan explained that this work is a long term fight, “Occasionally we actually win. Usually it’s more like a lot of little things. Maybe we move the needle a little.” As she spoke, I realized that in a time when environmental protections and regulations are being rolled back, small movement of the needle towards protecting the environment is very impressive. Even if the needle stays the same under significant pressure to move in the opposite direction, that’s a big win that deserves to be celebrated. 

During our interview, Jan spoke of how she sees environmental stewardship, “It’s our responsibility to use the intelligence that we have to work in harmony with creation, to take what we need and not what we don’t need, and to treat it with respect.” Jan sees stewardship not as ownership of the Earth, but as a responsibility to care for it.  Her focus on environmental stewardship is one of the reasons that she has devoted this time during her retirement to working for social justice. 

For more about food waste and climate change, check out our article: Fighting Food Waste & Feeding Folks in Our Community

Powering Up Communities for Environmental Change

Third Act is a national organization that was created to organize people over 60 for political and environmental action. I spoke with Catherine Dalggia, a co-facilitator for the Michigan branch. She explained, “Third Act does try to engage the passions of people like me, who are not necessarily scientists, but who feel as though there’s a contribution we can make to improving conditions on the ground for everybody, to leaving the planet a better place than it is now.”

As an organization, they focus on “fossil free finance, uplifting voting and democracy, and for powering up communities.” Fossil free finance is about convincing banks and other large corporations to stop investing their money in and insuring fossil fuel production, which is harmful for the environment. Third Act uplifts democracy by fighting voter suppression and gerrymandering — practices that make it more difficult for some people to vote. Their goal is to increase access. They power up communities by working with other community organizations and putting together events. 

The current political climate keeps Catherine motivated. She explained that it has been “50 years since the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, all these implementations of the 1970s that achieved some meaningful gains. And now to have them be undermined and sabotaged, it just brings it all home. We can’t rest on the gains that we’ve made. We have to make sure that they continue because clean air, clean water, a healthy environment, should be everybody’s birthright.” Clean air and water should be basic human rights, and there is no guarantee that a few generations from now kids will be able to go outside and play.

As citizens we have the power to do something about it. That power stays with us as we age. Catherine continued, “Seeing the potential for change as people come together is deeply inspiring. It is one of the things that keeps me going.” Connecting with the community and tapping into our collective power to make positive change are great reasons to spend her retirement working to make the world better.  

What kind of world do we want to leave behind?

Learning what inspired them was inspirational for me. Our commitment to community activism and service doesn’t have to end when we reach retirement age. 

One of my fears about aging is that at some point I will have to stop working for health reasons. However, I am cheered to know that that would not stop me from volunteering. These organizations are designed for flexibility and welcome folks with disabilities, encouraging them to contribute in ways that work for them. If you can’t join a protest march, perhaps you can call a Congressman or write a letter or design a flyer. You can take the skills and talents that you have acquired through years of life and apply them to make a positive change in this world. As we grow older we have to really think about, as Catherine Daggila said, “what kind of legacy we want to have, what kind of ancestors do we want to be?” 

How to Get Involved

When I was a child, I remember hearing, “many hands make light work.” Jan Wright explained, “There’s lots to be done out there. It’s not the easiest thing to find the right place, but I encourage people to try and persevere.” Catherine Daggila spoke of how important it is for people to participate, “Showing up means so much. It breaks through the normalization of this being the way that it’s supposed to be.” So, how do we show up for our community? For our neighbors? Ourselves and the generations that follow us? 

Show up. There is the option of physically showing up to a protest or an event (the ICPJ had a resistance song sing along. I would totally go to something like that.). 

Volunteer. You could show up and work. The Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice and Third Act Michigan rely on volunteers to donate their time to work towards change and justice. To learn more about events or volunteer opportunities, email the ICPJ at [email protected] or contact Jan Wright directly at [email protected]. Third Act communicates through email as well. Contact them at [email protected] 

Donate. Both organizations also accept financial donations. Donate to the ICPJ here: https://www.icpj.org/blog/donate/ or donate Third Act here: https://thirdact.org/donate/

Spread the word. Share this article on your social media. 

Tag us on Instagram: 

• The Ecology Center @ecology_center
• Third Act @thirdactorg
• ICPJ @icpjwashtenaw

Storytelling has always been a tool for change — and in times like these, it's more vital than ever. EcoStoryLab is a virtual, interactive workshop designed for activists, creatives, nonprofit professionals, and students who believe in the power of stories to inspire action and imagine new futures.

Through creative prompts, shared reflection, and collective exploration, we’ll dive into how storytelling fuels movements and helps us stay rooted in hope, resilience, and joy.

When: Wednesday 5 pm to 6 pm Sept. 10th to Oct. 15, 2025

Where: Online via Zoom (link will be provided after registration)

Register Here

Join us to build community, grow your storytelling practice, and strengthen your creative resilience — together.

By Trilby MacDonald, Ecology Center Writer

 “Any power I make is power that does not have to move 30 miles from the power plant in Monroe, MI, to our house. Solar power reduces the stress on the grid.” — Dave Strenski, SolarYpsi

Michigan’s electric grid is showing its age. Power outages have increased 78% over the last two decades, and utilities are asking for up to $9 billion in rate hikes to pay for improvements. Locally generated renewable energy relieves strain on the grid, reducing the need for costly new infrastructure. But old rules prevent us from adopting modern solutions that lower energy costs and improve reliability. 

For over a century, utilities have been rewarded for building big power plants and long transmission lines to bring power to communities while solar energy has struggled to gain support. “The electric grid is going through a profound transition, which is running into an outdated regulatory model … still mostly trapped into rewarding capital investments made by the utility rather than investments now being made by other clean energy companies, local governments, and everyday consumers,” says Charles Griffith, Director of the Climate & Energy Program at Ecology Center.

Across Michigan, community leaders and local energy advocates like Ecology Center are proving there’s a better way. With tools like rooftop solar, backup batteries, and pushing for smarter policies, they’re building a system that puts people first.

Putting People Over Profits

As long as profits depend on owning large assets, utilities will continue to resist clean energy solutions that give more control and value to consumers. As Brian Lydic, policy director at the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) explains, “Their main method of making money is not to exchange energy, but to put infrastructure in place and get a return on that investment through rates.” That return only comes when the utility owns the asset. “Utilities aren’t against clean energy, as long as they own it,” Lydic adds, “because if they own the assets, then they can reap the benefits of that investment.”

When residents and local governments take initiative, they can save money and improve reliability. Ann Arbor is moving forward with distributed energy solutions like the Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU,) an opt-in, supplemental service that works alongside DTE’s main grid, allowing residents to install city-owned solar and pay only for the energy they use. Soon, neighbors will also be able to buy energy from each other. 

The advocacy group Ann Arbor for Public Power (A2P2) hopes to go further by pushing for a ballot initiative that would require the city to buy the local grid assets from DTE. This would make it possible to shift more quickly from fossil fuels to renewables, freeing residents from the profit motive that drives infrastructure spending. However, municipalization could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and involve a legal battle with DTE. Financing the initiative would likely involve selling bonds to pay for the infrastructure that would be repaid over time through rate savings. 

Getting the Most from the Grid 

Expanding the capacity of the existing grid will lower costs for residential and commercial electricity. To do that, utilities must prioritize investments in the local energy distribution system. Michigan’s grid has two main parts: the transmission system, which carries electricity over long distances, and the distribution system, which delivers power locally. Distributed energy resources include things like rooftop solar panels, backup batteries, and small wind turbines which produce and store electricity close to where it’s used, instead of relying on the transmission system.

Technologies like inverters, grid management software, and batteries are already helping local infrastructure handle more power. Soon, electric vehicle batteries will also be able to supply power to the grid. Lydic’s work with IREC pushes utilities to make the existing grid more efficient. “One study said we could get like 30% or more of our energy from distributed generation in the future,” Lydic notes. “The more of these energy resources you can put on the distribution system, the lower the cost overall for electrification of cars and heating and cooking and everything else.”

Changing the Game

If Michigan is to speed up its clean energy transition, it will require a broad coalition of residents, local governments, and state leaders to push for fairer rules, more innovation, and a grid that works for everyone. Ecology Center and other advocates are intervening in Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) proceedings to promote a cleaner grid that keeps rates down and ensures all communities benefit equally. The City of Ann Arbor and a volunteer group in Ypsilanti, SolarYpsi, are inspiring examples of what’s possible with local leadership and home-grown solutions. The challenge is making sure state policies and regulations allow space for new ideas to take hold. 

Dave Strenski is the founder of SolarYpsi, a group of volunteers that provide solar installations for city residents that reduce the cost of home solar by about a third. He says a common misperception is that solar power puts stress on the electrical grid. “This could not be further from the truth … Any excess power I generate and push back into the grid does not go back to the power plant but to the closest ground — my neighbor’s toaster,” Strenski explains. 

Utilities are bent on keeping the current model, and making sure the process for customers to connect their own solar panels is slow and cumbersome. On top of that, they use their lobbying power to keep in place state laws that restrict or even ban certain types of local, customer-owned solar projects. These barriers make it harder for communities to take charge of their energy future. 

A new coalition of groups — including Clean Water Action, Voters Not Politicians, and MOSES Action — is pushing a ballot initiative to ban political contributions from Michigan’s monopoly utilities like DTE and Consumers Energy. They argue utility money has blocked reforms to improve grid reliability and expand community solar. “These corporations aren’t just influencing policy — they’re writing it,” says Ponsella Hardaway of MOSES Action, in a July 1 article published by MLive. The coalition’s campaign, Michiganders for Money Out of Politics, aims to strip big utilities of outsized political sway and let voters decide who shapes Michigan’s energy future.

This type of pressure is exactly what’s needed to shift the paradigm. 

“To really make an impact on anything, you need to intervene and be there at the table, submitting comments,” says Lydic. Boratha Tan of Vote Solar agrees: “"I think we need townships and cities to join the fight against utilities in these regulatory dockets; the current parties are mostly nonprofits, and there are limits to how well they can represent Michiganders. Only Ann Arbor has been a consistent presence in these dockets and pushing DTE. We need other cities and townships to take a seat at the table."

The real challenge, Griffith says, is that the regulatory structure doesn’t allow the MPSC to require utilities to do things differently. “Legislation would probably be required to change the model, but that also proves difficult given utility influence in Lansing, and the inertia of how it’s always been done,” he notes. 

A Consumer-Driven, Equitable Grid

Together with municipal leaders, advocates like Ecology Center are calling for a new approach that requires:

• Fair compensation for distributed generation: Update net billing policies so residents and businesses are paid fairly for the clean energy they produce.
• Streamlined interconnection: Make it faster and easier for customers to connect solar panels, batteries, and other distributed energy resources to the grid.
• Support for community solar and microgrids: Enable neighbors to share locally generated power and build resilience together.
• Prioritizing consumer and community ownership: Give residents, businesses, and local organizations more opportunities to invest in and benefit from clean energy.
• Policy reforms to cap rate hikes and reward efficiency: Protect consumers from runaway costs and encourage smarter energy use.

Local Innovation Leads the Way

Michigan’s energy system must shift from utility-centered control to one focused on consumers. Distributed energy, smart policies, and strong community engagement can cut energy bills, reduce blackouts, and create economic opportunities. As new technologies like artificial intelligence rapidly drive up electricity demand, homegrown models offer a powerful blueprint for delivering the flexible, community-centered solutions that can be deployed quickly — ensuring that the benefits of the clean energy transition reach everyone.