SHESC faculty project awarded President’s Award for Global Engagement

The old adage, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” has taken on new meaning for India Schneider-Crease. The assistant professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change has been hard at work to help create just that – treasure out of trash.

An evolutionary anthropologist, Schneider-Crease has spent over a decade studying gelada monkeys and the ecology of infectious diseases in Ethiopia's Simien Mountains National Park. In her role as co-director of the Simien Mountains Gelada Research Project, she and her team have also focused on the surrounding environment and its people, particularly the pressing issue of trash overwhelming the area.

“We saw that the ecosystems and animals were in increased contact with all different kinds of trash, which poses a disease transmission risk and can lead to erosion of the park’s fragile cliffs,” Schneider-Crease explained in a previous interview. “In addition, trash in the national park can harm the tourist-based economy of local areas, and the return of tourists — and their trash — can exacerbate the existing situation.”

From this challenge, the Zelaki Project was born. The project aims to develop scalable engineering solutions to Ethiopia’s plastic pollution crisis. It seeks to enhance community and environmental well-being while fostering partnerships between Arizona State University and Ethiopian academic and governmental organizations, including the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology.

Last year, Schneider-Crease and her colleagues headed to Ethiopia along with nine ASU students to begin building machines that they have been prototyping for two years. These machines are designed to process discarded plastic bottles left by tourists in Simien Mountains National Park. The goal is to transform the plastic waste into products the community can sell to tourists and, eventually, local markets—turning trash into treasure.

“Our students at the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology are currently troubleshooting and experimenting with those machines, while our students here at ASU are recreating the machines here,” Schneider-Crease said. “The next phase of our project will be working together with communities and artists on product development, so that we can work on creating products from discarded plastic that will have value in the communities affected by plastic waste. From there, we will keep expanding across Ethiopia!”

Schneider-Crease and her Zelaki Project colleagues – including Noah Snyder-Mackler, associate professor with ASU’s School of Life Sciences, and Tyler Elgen, a project manager with ASU’s Rob and Melanie Walton Sustainability Solutions Service – as well as their team of students, were recently honored by ASU President Michael M. Crow with the President’s Award for Global Engagement.

The Zelaki Project was one of ten projects to receive a President's Award, which were presented to the honorees during a special ceremony held in December 2024.

“The people, ideas and initiatives recognized by the President’s Awards represent the tremendous scope of talent, innovation and service that fuels ASU and its mission,” ASU President Michael M. Crow said. “These teams are tackling our hallmark challenges, and through their imaginative work, they are improving individual lives and our collective future.”

The awards formally recognize successful solutions in innovation, social embeddedness, sustainability, global engagement and transdisciplinary collaboration, and celebrate the commitment and contributions of ASU employees.

“It is a tremendous honor for the Zelaki Project to receive the President's Award for Global Engagement. Our engineering students – both here at ASU and in Ethiopia – have dedicated the past four years to building this international project tackling plastic pollution in Ethiopia. Witnessing their growth as leaders, engineers, and global citizens has been such a privilege and has really given me hope for the future,” Schneider-Crease said.