Category: Trash

Davis Legacy Soccer Tournament

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This past weekend I was at my daughter’s soccer tournament in Davis, California.  It is interesting to see volunteers picking up trash during the tournament. I thought it was nice they were doing it, as it definitely made a difference with less human-made trash laying around the soccer fields.

The volunteers from the local soccer club that was hosting the event, and were in pairs.  Thus, it wasn’t one person alone picking up the trash.

And come to find out, after talking with the volunteers, their trash pick duty was part of the requires volunteer hours they have to do with the club.  So the initiative wasn’t on their own accord.  This is interesting as we work on building out the motivation model with PnR and trying to provide less friction and more enjoyment for picking up trash.

Join in the Recycle Bowl

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Are you interested in getting a school to promote recycling by competing in a recycling competition? Well the Recycle Bowl is a solution.

What this yearly competition is doing is getting students and schools to recycle and reduce waste to promote healthy habits.  Over 2.2 million students were reached ranging from kindergarteners to 12th graders, 25 million pounds of trash were recycled, and about 4,400 schools participated in it. This friendly competition gets students and teachers to take action and promote a healthy cause among themselves to Keep America Beautiful (the competition’s motto).

If you are interested in participating, registrations open up on August 1st. Talk with your school and have them participate to not only engage students to reduce, reuse, and recycle, but to also improve the amount they recycle.

Charging Phones by Recylcing

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What do teenagers have now-a-days? A cellphone. What is a common problem teens face? Constant charging. Solution: create a machine that provides free charging by recycling plastic bottles.

A group of students at a high school in Kentucky created a simple machine that charges phones for 15 minutes from recycling a plastic bottle. A way to encourage students to recycle for their high school.

What can you do that encourages recycling for those in high school?

Article: Googly-Eyed Trash Eaters May Clean a Harbor Near You

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While there is trash on land to pick-up, there is trash in our water ways that needs the attention. Plastic bottle, cigarette buds, and even tires flow along the water ways and into the ocean. Well in Baltimore, John Kellett decided to take action and clean up their ports and water ways by creating a water wheel at the end of Jones Falls River. It is solar- and hydro-powered, which promotes cleaner energy for a cleaner cause. Not only did it collect thousands of pounds of trash from the water way, but the public supports it to the point where John Kellett was able to create a second wheel.

For more of this story, click on this link:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/mr-trash-wheels-professor-trash-wheels-baltimore-harbor-ocean-trash-pickup/

I also found a video from NBC News about the water wheel that I suggest you should check it out.

From Recycled Old Phones to 2020 Tokyo Olympic Medals

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With the 2020 Tokyo Olympics coming up in three more years, Japan has begun its plans for creating the medals. What they are asking from their public are their old cell phones and electronics to produce the 5,000 Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Medals. That is as much as eight tons of metal (40kg of gold, 4,920kg of silver, and 2,944kg of bronze after production) as they aim to collect. For such an important world wide event, Japan wants to “contribute to the story, to raise awareness about a sustainable future and to make a unique contribution.”

–Tokyo 2020 Engages all of Japan in Medal Initiative 

Not only will this decrease the amount of e-trash in the landfill, but the project will also get the public to contribute with a simple act. Their project is similar to what we are trying to do with the exercising and picking up trash.

Running is now a destination sport

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This morning I received an email from Homeaway (part of the sharing economy initiative — a competitor to AirBnb, and they also run VRBO, which has been around for awhile).  The email mentioned that Homeaway is now “the Official Accommodations Provider of Destination Races‘ Wine Country Half Marathon Series”.

The Wine Country Half Marathons sound fun, with half marathons taking place in Napa (California), Santa Barbara (California), Virginia, Oregon, and more.  On their web site, they highlight the benefits of participating in a Destination Race:

  • Scenery
  • Charity
  • Camaraderie (or is it Comraderie??)
  • Rewards
  • Celebration
  • Music
  • Culinary (for a Wine Country theme, I would have thought this would have been a higher priority, not 7th in the priority list 🙂
  • Competition

The destination – theme half marathon series is furthered with what Vacation Races is doing — which has a motto of “run where you play”.  For accommodations, Vacation Races takes a different approach than Destination Races.  Vacation Races focuses on providing campgrounds as opposed to housing or hotels.

Note: I have run Vacation Race’s Yosemite Half Marathon, and will run the race again in May with Martin (son), Naya (daughter), Betsy (sister), and David (brother-in-law).  It is a popular race, and has been sold out since beginning of the yer.

This is fun to see running taking a destination – theme approach. No longer are events and groups of events simply a run for winning, but an experience.  [ Note: In the golf industry 20 years ago, real estate developers and economic development groups did the same thing — building multiple golf courses in one place — to create a destination rather than just one golf course — Cabo, Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, and more ]

We think this destination – theme trend is excellent, and something that might lend itself to more runners picking up trash and cleaning the environment they run in.

 

Time to Pimp up for Picking up Trash

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There are invisible heroes, walking around the streets that you may not know about. They are the catadores. They go around cities, picking up trash off the streets and into their carroça, and then selling the trash at a very low price for a form of currency. Mundano, a graffiti artist and TED Fellow, created a project called “Pimp My Carroça” in order to promote the catadores through art and community.  He wants people to recognize these heroes in not only Brazil, but around the world. Click on this link to listen to the whole video about Mundano’s inspiration in forming this worldwide project.

His project is actually very similar to what Pick’n Run is trying to do.

Giving e-Trash a Second Chance

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Isidore Electronics Recycling, a recycling company and social enterprise, believes in giving e-trash a second chance. They have been creating jobs for incarcerated people, while at the same time trying to reduce the amount of e-trash that is increasingly going to the landfill (15% of waste is electronics, but 75% of the toxics produced in the landfill are from electronics). Their mission is “to save the planet and give back to society at the same time”

For more information about this company and what they do, click this link.

Star Wars Sculptures from Tech Trash

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With Star Wars 7 and Rogue One out in theaters and soon onto DVD, there is more hype among the Star Wars fans across the world. There is one artist named Gabriel Dishaw who has dedicated himself in saving disposed tech by creating Star Wars sculptures. His goal is “to inspire people to think differently about waste, and hopefully influence them to take action.” You can find his sculptures on his Instagram and more information about his creations on the CBC website by clicking on this link. May the force be with you always.

Trash Into Graffiti

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Leaving trash around doesn’t look appealing to the public eye. Its filth just makes any area that you are in not look clean. Now here is the question: how can we turn trash into a form of street art that actually is publicly appealing? Well this Portuguese street artist named Artur Bordalo answers the question with his own monumental sculptures to not only use the mountains of waste he collects, but to raise awareness on the global’s unsustainable garbage production. From a grizzly bear to a skunk, he shows his art work on the streets of Portugal for the public to observe.

To see the interview with Artur Bordalo and to look at his artwork, click on this link: https://streetart360.net/2016/12/19/bordalo-ii-an-artist-turns-trash-into-street-art-masterpieces/