Authors note: All photos and quotes courtesy of Kate Kuehl.

For nearly 50 years, April 22, commonly known as Earth Day, has commemorated a celebration of our magnificent planet and awareness for the environmental challenges that our planet currently faces. A typical Earth Day celebration consists of tree/flower planting, cleaning up the streets/neighborhoods, and ensuring proper recycling habits. However, this year, Earth Day was celebrated differently at the University of Minnesota.

On April 22, 2017, at the University of Minnesota, the celebration of Earth Day consisted of hundreds upon thousands of college-aged party-goers attending a block party, held by a local company, in the quaint neighborhood of Dinkytown. The streets were instantaneously filled with piles of red solo cups, beer cans, and other trash.

Kate Kuehl, a junior at the University of Minnesota, was asked by an organizer of the party to photograph the fun shenanigans and the events of the day. Originally, a drone was set to be used for photos, but after drone failure, Kate relied on her camera for photos. As she was conversing with many of the party-goers and taking the photographs, she began to notice the trash filling the streets.

"I was originally just taking pictures of people, but it was so hard to avoid the trash... Especially since it was on Earth Day, it all just seemed really messed up."

Considering it was Earth Day, Kate began to feel quite disgusted with the behavior of the attendees and the amount of trash lying in the streets.

"At some point, I kind of felt upset with myself that I was attempting to portray this event in a positive light while being disgusted."

After posting the photos to her personal social media platforms, people became disgusted with what they saw. The original post has since had 400+ Facebook shares and has sparked many different opinions. However, her photos have also received backlash with many people saying that she failed to portray the event correctly and that cleanup did happen, contrary to what the photos say.

"I still posted them because I felt it was wrong not to."

Although the organizers and a few volunteers helped clean the area where the block party was held, all of the trash went into large black trash bags. There was no separating of trash, recycling, and compost items.

The importance here is that, on the one day that we are supposed to respect our helpless planet, thousands of students decided to create a substantial amount of waste. Though I'm sure that these students possibly weren't aware of the damage being done to the environment, it's still incredibly insensitive to be creating this much waste.

Hopefully, if the block party returns for a second year, the waste will be kept to a minimum and Dinkytown will be cleaned once again.

Check out some of the photos below: