Ecology Center
Elsie Lee-RobbinsSeptember - December 2024
In Fall 2024, I joined the Ecology Center in Ann Arbor as a Communications Fellow. The Ecology Center is a nonprofit that works on environmental justice issues for healthy people and a healthy planet. To do this, they research toxic chemicals in everyday products in their Healthy Stuff Lab, they work with policymakers for environmental protection policies, and put pressure on corportations to make safer products and use clean energy.
Receipt deceipt
As a Communications Fellow at the Ecology Center, I collaborated with teams across the organization to create visualizations to communicate environmental issues and solutions. This ranged from engaging social media visualizations to graphics for policymakers.
This graphic was created for social media, to quickly convey the takeaway that 4 out of 5 receipts had toxic chemicals in them. Our Receipt Deceit report was used to educate consumers on how to safely handle receipts (tldr; don't touch them when wet, especially if you are pregnant) and to advocate for stores to switch to non-toxic alternatives or digital receipts.
Lead poisoning in children
It was a lot of fun to be a part of the work that the Ecology Center does. By working across the organization, I was able to learn more about toxic chemicals in receipts, PFAS, electric vehicles, lead poisoning, sustainable procurement, and climate justice.
Although lead poisoning is a sad topic, this was a fun set of visualizations to work on. I created a map of Michigan to highlight which counties have high levels of lead poisoning. I chose to visualize the data normalized to the population to show that this is a problem for the Upper Peninsula and rural places in Michigan, not just Detroit and Flint.
Dataviz Style Guide
As a Communications Fellow at the Ecology Center, I taught the communications team and project areas about data visualizations. I designed a bespoke workshop to distill the key principles of data visualization, apply them to advocacy and communication, and how data visualization can be leveraged specifically at the Ecology Center. I presented this workshop to 5 people from the communication team and 8 people from the project areas. Additionally, I created a set of brand standards and best practices of data visualizations for the Ecology Center to use going forward. This resource will guide the communications team after my time at the Ecology Center so that they can implement these key ideas in future graphics. Not only does this resource build upon the brand standards to build a cohesive look and feel for the Ecology Center's brand, it also focuses on best practices for effective data design, to result in future products that are both visually engaging and effective at communicating data insights.
Advocacy and policymakers
We joined the Michigan Environmental Justice Council for a day to energize the campaign for clean energy in Michigan. We traveled to Lansing and advocated for a future fueled by clean energy. It was rewarding to see the work that the Ecology Center advances have a real impact on policy, such as the Filter First policy to install lead water filters in all schools and daycares.
