We Love Our Educational Partners and Supporters
- Emma Belanger
- Jul 24
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 27
At Green Living Science, we know that our work can deepen and expand into the community when we work with others in the City who are committed to sustainability and serving the folks of Detroit. Over the years, we’ve developed close partnerships, mutually beneficial, coming to one another’s community events, sharing our knowledge, and making beautiful things happen for our communities. Our gratitude for their support of our programming, and for the programming they all provide, extends far and wide. We wanted to take a moment to share more about some these partners and the cool work they do around the City! There are truly so many more we could feature, but here are some we've been collabing with recently:
Recycle Here!
Recycle Here! (RH!) is where GLS started. Our office is still housed in the same building, the Life is a Dreamtroit complex, and we often get our office supplies, cool new outfits, and items for our repurposed crafts from Recycle Here! and their community take-something-leave-something free thrift store. When we host Zero Waste field trips, we bring kids into RH! to show them what materials can be recycled and help explain why recycling programs are important. Together–along with another nonprofit baby of RH!, Make Art Work, and with the residents of the Life is a Dreamtroit building–we help to steward the Lincoln Street Art Park. We’ve been able to plant a pollinator garden, a few trees, and use the space to hold our shipping container classroom. Right now, Make Art Work is running a Patronicity campaign to raise funds for improvements to the space!
The Detroit Public Library
A renewed partnership we’ve built is with the Detroit Public Library system. In the past few months, we’ve been able to bring our programming to several branches around the City. We’ve read our books, Georgie’s Busy Day and Life of Poly Plastic, to groups of kids, led repurposed art activities like dinosaur-making from water bottles and creating upcycled planters, and connected with the wonderful librarians and communities in different neighborhoods. We’re excited to keep working with them and bringing sustainability into these integral city spaces!
Friends of Rouge Park
The folks at Friends of Rouge Park are passionate community leaders who have great programming within Detroit’s largest urban park. In April, they came out to our Every Day is Earth Day event at Munger Elementary to provide a fun activity for students about what we find in nature, and more recently, they led our Generation Green Junior Champions on a nature walk at Rouge Park. We learned about native and invasive plant species, listened for birds, and talked about how grounding it can be to immerse yourself in a greenspace, especially when you live in an urban area. Check out a program of theirs soon!
The Detroit Zoo and Belle Isle Nature Center
Over the last few years, we’ve collaborated with the Detroit Zoological Society at the Detroit Zoo and at the Belle Isle Nature Center (did you know admissions are free for the BINC!?). Whether we’re bringing fun, repurposed craft activities to their summer camps, presenting and activating at their Teen Summit,,or bringing the youth in our programs to their spaces, we value their commitment to connecting communities to the diversity of more-than-human life.
Detroit Riverfront Conservancy
The Detroit River is a beautiful natural asset to our City, and the folks at the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy (DRFC) help make sure communities have access to it! Tabling at their events in Ralph C. Wilson Park, hosting the Detroit River Coalition at Robert Valade Park, and educationally accommodating our summer program, plus visiting their parks along the river always makes our team feel appreciative of and lucky to have such beautiful spaces in our backyard. Next time you’re looking to visit a cool park or take an evening stroll, see what the DRFC has to offer!
buildOn
Providing community-centered service learning experiences, buildOn in Detroit gives high schoolers the opportunity to grow personally, scholastically, and professionally, all while giving back to their communities. Alums from our Student Recycling Ambassadors, current and Gen:G Junior Champions all hail from their respective school’s buildOn program. Collectively they have brought robotics and crafts to multiple Every Day is Earth Day events at DPSCD lower elementary schools. We’ve also had them table at our events, and we’re excited to continue to grow our partnership!
MM-O-DD
A hidden gem in the City, Metropolitan Museum of Design Detroit is a gallery that’s beautifully curated by Leslie Ann Pilling. Through the summer, they currently have an exhibit, Earthlings Unite, that features work from staff at GLS and other local artists who are inspired by nature and sustainability. Leslie also provides amazing lessons in biomimicry, teaching folks to think about how to incorporate the designs of nature into fashion, industry, and architecture. She recently hosted our Gen:G students, and we all left feeling creatively inspired. Find some time to visit the space soon!
WM
As a longtime partner who has supported our work in every pillar, WM plays a huge role in recycling in Detroit. Funding many legacy events and projects, working with us to expand the City’s recycling program, and bringing a big recycling truck to impress the kids at our Every Day is Earth Day event are all ways WM makes sure our work has a big impact. We’re excited for the opening of their new MRF and educational center–a first of its kind in Detroit!
DPSCD
We serve as an official contractor to the Detroit Public Schools Community District, bringing in our recycling assemblies, Pre-K lessons, and in-class lessons to schools in almost every neighborhood of the City. We are so grateful for this standing 15+ year relationship and the opportunity to inspire thousands of students each year. Of course, we more than believe DPSCD creates educational environments aimed at supporting students to learn lifelong skills and build themselves a bright future, and that’s why we develop educator and curriculum support too!
Ecosphere Organics
Ecosphere Organics creates renewable, organics-based materials using waste that would otherwise go to landfills. They make pigments, textiles, advanced materials for manufacturing, organic chemicals, and even products like
fertilizers that go back to the agriculture system. With the CEO and Founder, Brittanie Dabney, they have supported us by providing luggage tags and cool educational lessons to our past Student Recycling Ambassadors and current Gen:G Junior Champions!
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