![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
cirakaite pointed me to the site that builds the tiny houses I posted about in my last entry. Here's a fascinating video about how the houses are put together.Learn more at Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.
cirakaite pointed me to the site that builds the tiny houses I posted about in my last entry. Here's a fascinating video about how the houses are put together.Learn more at Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.
BP: Very helpful list
Jun. 10th, 2010 10:29 pmA very helpful list from Cherie Priest, Things You Can Do About the Oil Spill.
Global Soap Project
Apr. 22nd, 2010 10:08 amHere's a breathtakingly simple yet powerful Decrease Worldsuck idea I heard about on Betty Londergan's excellent What Gives blog: The Global Soap Project. (On Twitter at @GlobalSoap and Facebook here.) (Betty really has a knack for finding cool organizations to support.)
Every day, in millions of hotel rooms in America, something weird happens. The housekeeping staff makes the bed, cleans the room, and replaces the soap, removing the used bar and leaving a fresh bar in its place. This simple American habit of throwing away 800 million bars of hotel soap a year completely befuddled Derreck Kayongo when he first experienced it fifteen years ago, in a hotel in Philadelphia.
As a child, Kayongo’s family had fled Uganda for Kenya during the Idi Amin regime, and he was all too familiar with the desperation of refugees who have little or no access to clean water and soap. Kayongo was educated in Kenya, came to America to earn his Bachelors and Masters degrees, and continued to rise to his position as a senior level humanitarian relief expert working for CARE in Atlanta– but he never forgot the extravagant waste of hotel soap that first struck him. “I kept thinking, what if we took some of this soap back home, recycled it and made brand new soap to give to people who don’t have any?”
Not having soap is a clear and present danger in refugee camps all across Africa. Hand-washing is the first line of defense in the prevention of acute respiratory and diarrhea diseases that ravage camps, particularly afflicting children under the age of 5. In Uganda alone, 200,000 children a year die from preventable diseases. Studies indicate that hand-washing with soap can reduce the risk of these diseases by 42-65% — which makes every bar of soap we throw away a tragic missed opportunity.
So last year, Kayongo and his wife Sarah started the The Global Soap Project to recover and recycle soap from American hotels: sanitizing, melting and remodeling it into new bars that can be distributed to refugee camps in Africa. To the Kayongos’ great amazement, hotels like the InterContinental, the Ritz, and hundreds of others enthusiastically embraced his idea. Volunteers lined up to help. And today, just months later, he has tons of soap accumulated in warehouses and a brand new machine to recycle the old into fresh new bars of soap that will be shipped as extra cargo on ships already making the trip to Africa.
Every day, in millions of hotel rooms in America, something weird happens. The housekeeping staff makes the bed, cleans the room, and replaces the soap, removing the used bar and leaving a fresh bar in its place. This simple American habit of throwing away 800 million bars of hotel soap a year completely befuddled Derreck Kayongo when he first experienced it fifteen years ago, in a hotel in Philadelphia.
As a child, Kayongo’s family had fled Uganda for Kenya during the Idi Amin regime, and he was all too familiar with the desperation of refugees who have little or no access to clean water and soap. Kayongo was educated in Kenya, came to America to earn his Bachelors and Masters degrees, and continued to rise to his position as a senior level humanitarian relief expert working for CARE in Atlanta– but he never forgot the extravagant waste of hotel soap that first struck him. “I kept thinking, what if we took some of this soap back home, recycled it and made brand new soap to give to people who don’t have any?”
Not having soap is a clear and present danger in refugee camps all across Africa. Hand-washing is the first line of defense in the prevention of acute respiratory and diarrhea diseases that ravage camps, particularly afflicting children under the age of 5. In Uganda alone, 200,000 children a year die from preventable diseases. Studies indicate that hand-washing with soap can reduce the risk of these diseases by 42-65% — which makes every bar of soap we throw away a tragic missed opportunity.
So last year, Kayongo and his wife Sarah started the The Global Soap Project to recover and recycle soap from American hotels: sanitizing, melting and remodeling it into new bars that can be distributed to refugee camps in Africa. To the Kayongos’ great amazement, hotels like the InterContinental, the Ritz, and hundreds of others enthusiastically embraced his idea. Volunteers lined up to help. And today, just months later, he has tons of soap accumulated in warehouses and a brand new machine to recycle the old into fresh new bars of soap that will be shipped as extra cargo on ships already making the trip to Africa.
RecycleBank
Feb. 3rd, 2010 10:36 amI just found out about this program through Twitter and signed up today. From an article on Planet Green (@planetgreen on Twitter), here:
Follow Recycle Bank here on Twitter and here on Facebook.
( What I did today to make the world a better place )
I'm curious: are people still interested in the decrease worldsuck reports I'm doing? Have any of you followed up on some of the things I've reported and started doing these decrease worldsuck things I've mentioned yourself? If so, please let me know in the comments. If this initiative has inspired you in any way, I'd really like to know if/how I'm making a difference.
The green movement is a tricky thing. Most of us realize that climate change is happening--the world of the future will be fundamentally different because of what's happening today, and we all need to do something about it. Together.This program seems like a win-win: encourage recycling while at the same time supporting local business. I checked with the city, and the curbside program isn't available where I live, in Minneapolis, but there are other ways you can earn recycle points.
The problem is sometimes thinking about doing something doesn't always translate into actually doing something. What can buying a pair of vintage jeans or reusing aluminum foil have any impact on something as big and scary as global warming? This is a problem that spans the spectrum of people too. Even the most vocal of treehuggers sometimes find it difficult to do something as seemingly simple and intuitive as recycling, and if that's the case, what does that say about the average person?
It's hard to guilt people into it. They'll end up just resenting the entire issue. It's even hard to appeal to people's emotions... there are only so many pictures you can show someone of cute, cuddly polar bears somewhere before they start getting numb to it. This is where people like RecycleBank come in. RecycleBank was started by two high school friends who have figured out how to get people to take good, green actions: reward them.
RecycleBank rewards people by giving them points based on how much they recycle. They can then redeem their points at a variety of stores and outlets. Or, if they don't want points, people can donate their credit to charitable causes, like the Green Schools program.
Today, RecycleBank serves over one million people across 20 states in the United States, and that number continues to grow every week. They are already operating in the UK, the program will launch service in Europe this summer, and they have received prestigious awards from the U.N, amongst others. To date, RecycleBank members have collectively saved over 4.4 million trees and over 295 million gallons of gas through weekly recycling efforts. Possibly one of the best parts of the deal, though, is over 40-50% of all rewards redeemed are at local businesses.
This is all to say that their model works. People end up recycling more if they get rewarded for doing it, even if the reward is small.
It does raise the question if people are recycling because they want to help the environment (and they just need a little push), or if their motives are purely to get rewards at local grocery stores, music shops, or even major e-commerce sites. But, ultimately, does it matter?
Who's to say that if people weren't being rewarded, if those 4.4 million trees would have been conserved or the 295 million gallons of gas would have been saved? A study last year found that only 38% percent of people recycle old cell phones, but 98% of people would be willing to do so... if they just got a little push with cash, store credit, or tax breaks.
"There are so many environmental initiatives out there that are important," says Gonen. "Solar, wind, biofuels. But these are all huge, capital-intensive projects. Most of us can't do that, but everyone can recycle."
Follow Recycle Bank here on Twitter and here on Facebook.
( What I did today to make the world a better place )
I'm curious: are people still interested in the decrease worldsuck reports I'm doing? Have any of you followed up on some of the things I've reported and started doing these decrease worldsuck things I've mentioned yourself? If so, please let me know in the comments. If this initiative has inspired you in any way, I'd really like to know if/how I'm making a difference.
How to green your holiday gift wrapping
Dec. 2nd, 2009 03:55 pmby using the Japanese art of Furoshiki cloth:
This is a fabulously cool idea that I have sent to the Mexico mission team. If you remember, we built two little buildings to give to the people who lives in the colonias. With some of these installed in the ceiling, they could have solar lighting for absolutely free.
( What I did yesterday and today to make the world a better place )
( What I did yesterday and today to make the world a better place )
