​Since its inception in 2017, Building Futures in Malawi (also known as the Mtuli Foundation), a non-profit organization based in Malawi, has been working to offer support for numerous projects within local communities. Their primary mission is to provide education development for children and girls, build educational facilities, as well as provide environmental education. In collaboration with GreenLight Solutions, The Mtuli foundation’s Education Development Officer, Robert Mhango, has concentrated his efforts on environmental challenges. This is GreenLight’s third semester working with Robert; the first two semester projects focused on researching sustainable agriculture and irrigation, and developing a way to share that information with the community. Many sustainable agricultural techniques, including: sub-irrigated planters, raised-bed irrigation systems, and food forests have been implemented as a result of past cohort projects.

In Spring 2022, Dynamic RE teamed up with GreenLight Solutions for a third time, aiming to provide sustainable solutions accessible to homeowners and investors. Previous cohorts worked to compile resources for Dynamic’s website and create sustainable ideas for short-term rentals and properties. The team was led by Lukas Gutierrez, who worked alongside solutioneers Adina Guntermann, Alexandra Pesternikova, and Madison Harris.

​The team’s mission was to expand access and understanding of the local utility sustainability resource landscape to homeowners and real estate investors via publicly accessible media. To meet the challenge of creating outreach for resources, the team was tasked with interviewing utility companies and local municipalities in the Phoenix Valley. After the interviews were completed the videos were posted on YouTube to create accessibility for those in the real estate space and homeowners alike. 

​Green Living Magazine is a lifestyle magazine focused on promoting the best ways to be eco-conscious in all areas of life. Due to this, Green Living Magazine aims to be as sustainable as possible in every aspect of their business. With the plan to host two separate events during Earth Day weekend, Green Living Magazine of course wanted to make these events were as sustainable as possible by implementing green event practices. They reached out to Greenlight Solutions for advice, recommendations, and support for hosting their green events as they sought to improve their waste diversion practices, recruit green-minded volunteers, and market their events to a wider demographic. Throughout the 2022 spring semester, our student team and project partners worked towards our vision of two low-waste and sustainability focused earth week events. 

​Our project team’s biggest objective for the earth week events was to divert as much waste as possible from the landfills. From there we set our goal to achieve 60% of total waste accumulated at the event to be diverted from the landfill. We started out by researching best practices for waste diversion, as well as researching local organizations and facilities that could help with recycling and composting. The next step was determining waste hauler needs and planning accordingly. For the Future of Sustainability event on April 22nd, our Green Living Magazine project team ended up diverting 85% of the event’s total waste from being placed into the landfill, which greatly exceeded our team’s expectations. This included 12.4 lbs of recycling, 21.4 lbs of compost, and 67.4lbs of excess food donated to a local group. The total waste diversion from the Earth Day Extravaganza event on April 23rd also ended up exceeding our team’s original 60% goal, with 77% of the event waste diverted from the landfill. With 74% of the diverted waste being composted food, and 26% being recycling.