ECOLECTIVOS: A world wrapped in plastic
Lisa Thompson, Susana Aragón, Eri Saikawa, and Mayari Hengstermann
Plastic is everywhere. It is a public health crisis, but there are solutions. Because plastic is made from petroleum, it is directly related to climate change. Less than 10% of plastic is recycled globally. In this exhibit, we created a structure made of over 6,000 recycled plastic bottles that were donated from local organizations in Atlanta. We describe the problems of plastic production and use, as well as the solution that can be taken in the United States, but also in Guatemala. We focus on our environmental sciences research project in rural Guatemala known as Ecolectivos and highlight our work with local communities who are taking steps to reduce the burning of plastic waste in household fires.
This exhibit was made possible by the support of the Emory Climate Research Initiative, which provided financial backing. We also extend our gratitude to the many contributors who helped us collect the 8,000 bottles that make up this exhibit: Emory Recycles, Emory School of Nursing, Emory Office of Sustainability Initiatives, Emory Rollins School of Public Health, Plastic Free Emory, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Captain Planet Foundation, Osprey Foundation, The Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM), and the Sustainability Program at Coca-Cola.
About the Team
Lisa M. Thompson, PhD, RN is a professor in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University and has worked for over 20 years on household air pollution projects in Guatemala, including the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) stove intervention trial. She is the Principal Investigator of Ecolectivos, an implementation science cluster randomized trial in rural Guatemala using educational working groups to develop and evaluate community-level strategies that aim to reduce household burning of plastic waste.
Susana Aragón is a Peruvian multidisciplinary artist and educator, graduated from Universidad Católica del Perú. Her work covers painting, printing, costume design, poetry, performing and audiovisual arts. She has created and directed installations, performances, multimedia shows, video poetry, and video installations and has collaborated with theater, music and dance artists doing costumes, videos and installations (San Francisco Youth Theater, The Marsh, Ruth Asawa School for the Arts, Sota, Word for Word, etc). Aragón has curated group exhibitions in Perú and USA. She has participated in poetry gatherings and cultural initiatives and shows in Peru, France, Japan, Mexico, Chile, Canada, Poland, Panama and the United States. Her work has been published in a number of poetry publications and can be found at www.susanaaragon.art
Eri Saikawa, PhD, is an environmental scientist at Emory University who conducts interdisciplinary research on the environment. She has worked on various projects covering atmospheric chemistry (aerosol modeling and tropospheric ozone); environmental health (assess adverse health impacts of air pollution); biogeochemistry (modeling of global nitrous oxide emissions from soil and quantification of GHG/soil ammonia fluxes); climate science (estimates of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions), and environmental policy/policy (analysis of the impacts of environmental regulations and trade, as well as analysis of policy-making processes. She is the Principal Investigator of Ecolectivos together with Dr. Thompson.
Mayari Hengstermann Artiga, PhD, is the Guatemalan anthropologist who is the local Principal Investigator for Ecolectivos. She is a lecturer in qualitative methods at Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. She has collaborated with Dr Thompson on several studies related to household air pollution and has been a key investigator for research studies in Guatemala over the past 15 years.
Amy Lovvorn, MPH, has worked as a research director and public health monitor for more than 20 years. She has a particular interest in health issues affecting women and children. She spent the last 5 years as the research director of the HAPIN trial, a multinational randomized trial of a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stove intervention that investigated household air pollution and its impact on health. She is a research manager for ECOLECTIVOS.
Evelia Gonzalez Jimenez, RN, is a Guatemalan field team member who has worked on research projects related to household air pollution for over 8 years. She is an expert at assessing air pollution exposures, collecting biospecimens, and working with local study participants. She is from La Fuente community in Sant Maria Xalapán, the area where Ecolectivos is being conducted.
Anaís Azul (they/them) is a California based composer-performer, Fulbright Scholar, and teaching artist. Their artistry engages with music as a tool for community building, cross-genre collaboration, and collective healing. Azul writes music that is in conversation with looped vocal harmonies, classical melodies, and Latin American singer-songwriter traditions. Classically-trained with an experimental spirit, Azul received their B.M in Music Composition and Theory from Boston University with a concentration in piano and their MFA in Music, Performer-Composer from California Institute of the Arts. They are beginning their PhD in ethnomusicology in the fall of 2024 at UC Riverside.