Would you like to be involved in planning the next sustainable TEDx event? 

We are having a meeting tomorrow, Tuesday, March 20th at 7pm in room 3556 of the DANA building. Everyone is welcome, and you can put in as much or as little time as you can spare! 

Follow us on Facebook (TEDxNicholsArboretum) for more information on meeting times! 

Also, be on the lookout for a possible NAME CHANGE coming in the next few weeks — we’re thinking of changing venues this year. But don’t worry, we are still going to have a potluck picnic/hike in the Arboretum. All speakers and attendees invited!

Attending a TEDx event is like taking a much-needed deep breath: enriching, rejuvenating and something you might only have the opportunity to do every once in a while.

Yesterday afternoon, over 200 students, University staff members and environmental enthusiasts took the opportunity to gather in the Nichols Arboretum Amphitheater to hear a series of talks focusing on environmental sustainability and its applications in all areas of life — ranging from education, to art, to the deep-breathing practices of yoga.

TED is a nonprofit organization that began in 1984 with the mission to connect people across the realms of technology, education and design (hence the acronym). Since then, TED has evolved into a global platform for innovative thinkers to share their ideas through online videos, annual conferences and independently organized events under the title of TEDx.

“TEDxNicholsArboretum” marked the third TEDx event held at the University in the past two years. Unlike the previous conferences, no formal advertising preceded yesterday’s event in an effort to generate zero waste.

D.J. Ferguson, an English teacher at Chelsea High School, kicked off the sustainability talks by asking audience members to remember something important they learned in high school. As audience members racked their brains for an answer, Ferguson demonstrated that the most valuable lessons probably didn’t come from a textbook.

“Human beings learn through experiences,” Ferguson said in his talk. “We’re not designed to sit down. Sitting down is the most unnatural position you can be in as a human being.”

Ferguson explained his belief that the purpose of education should be to create sustainable human beings, not to plow through lesson plans or bolster standardized test scores.

“We are literally educating ourselves away from everything that is essentially human,” Ferguson said.

The second speaker, professor of physics and yogi Jasprit Singh, connected the sustainable mentality to the practice of yoga. Explaining that yoga calls for its practitioners to “build themselves coherently,” Prof. Singh outlined seven ways in which the practice promotes “good life” in much the same way as sustainability. The seven concepts that Singh listed included physical wellness, creativity, balance, loving and receiving love, freedom of expression, meditation and the ability to see oneself in others.

Shortly after his talk, Prof. Singh led the audience in a brief yoga session. Every audience member could be seen reaching his or her arms to the sky and heaving in chestfulls of warm arboretum air.

While the first half of the event focused on the individual’s role in sustainability, the second set of talks examined sustainability on a community level.

Jennifer Canvasser, an Environmental Health Organizer at the Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, opened the second session by explaining how toxicology often gets overlooked when thinking about sustainability since harmful chemicals are difficult to trace.

“We don’t always know what we’re being exposed to,” Canvasser said. “Toxic chemicals are out of sight and out of mind because we just don’t see them or talk about them.”

Designer and Program in the Environment instructor Kat Superfisky gave one of the final talks of the day, describing how sustainability isn’t just about efficiency, but beauty too.

“Sustainability can and should be sexy,” Superfisky said. “If we have a beautiful world, we’re going to want to live in that world.”

At the close of the event, Business senior Poonam Dagli, one of the event’s principal organizers, said she was incredibly pleased with the audience and the feelings stirred by the talks.

“Sometimes sustainability is something that can get you down,” she said. “But right now, I feel really uplifted, like I can go out and do anything.”

That and a deep breath are exactly what TEDx is all about.

By Jeff Waraniak, Daily Arts Writer
Published October 9, 2011 in The Michigan Daily

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“Sustainability”, “eco-friendly”, and “going green” have all become catch phrases that few fully understand and many associate with saving the planet, hugging a tree, or doing something altruistic and inherently inconvenient.

Oh, how we beg to differ.

To sustain by definition means to keep in existence. Thus, to sustain [humanity] is to keep [humanity] in existence. That sounds pretty selfish (in a good way) to us and more akin to survival than an altruistic venture. We have evolved to survive, yet are now making conscious decisions to reduce our quality of health and happiness. Forget future generations for a minute. We are talking about you and me in real time.

So why are we making these decisions? Because we don’t realize the consequences of our actions. We live in a privileged society where we can (for example) afford to export our waste to developing countries. But the world is a complex system that is damn good at recycling. Our trash, shipped to (i.e.) India where regulations are lax, is burned. Air and water travel. Not only are people in the surrounding area unjustly affected, but we too eventually end up breathing and drinking our trash. So much for out of sight, out of mind.

Realities like this exist on various scales, from food to energy systems. But we don’t want to scare you. Quite the opposite! We simply want to encourage thinking before acting and finding solutions via playing and collaborating. We also want to practice before we preach, so TEDxNicholsArboretum is going zero waste and is thinking about reducing, reusing, and recycling at every process in production.

Our goal is for you to realize that ecosystem and human health are one. So eco-friendly actually translates to human friendly (and FYI… ‘going green’ literally means to increase greenery – i.e. trees, plants – to act as a carbon sink and suck out CO2 from the atmosphere via photosynthesis).

The point is we treat the planet as if it’s disposable when in reality, humans are the disposable ones. The earth will be just fine no matter what we do to it, so how about we work together to sustain humanity.