Lauren Singer is on a mission.
The spunky 23-year-old has spent the last two years living a Zero Waste (ZW) life. Singer is so good at it that all of the trash she’s created since then fits in a 16-ounce Mason jar. That’s right: two years of garbage in one jar.
In her amusing and inspiring blog, entitled trash is for tossers, Singer documents her ZW lifestyle and explains why it all started in the first place. As an environmental studies major at NYU, she watched one of her schoolmates bring lunch to class every week, contained in an undue amount of disposable packaging. This weekly ritual induced the sentiment that millennials are the earth’s future and “…here we are with our trash, messing it up.”
According to Duke University’s Center for Sustainability and Commerce, the average American produces 4.3 pounds of waste everyday. That’s more than two and a half times what it was in the 1960s. What’s worse is that approximately two-thirds of this trash could be composted rather than sent to the thousands of overloaded landfills in this country.
In an interview Singer recently did with New York magazine, she said one of the top three things you can do to reduce waste is “…[t]ransition out purchased products and learn to make things yourself.” (Apparently, producing your own toothpaste is one of the easiest ways to make a fresh start.) Which is why Singer is progressing from micro to macro by founding The Simply Co., a company that makes homemade, environmentally-friendly laundry detergent. It was so successful on Kickstarter, The Simply Co. met their target of $10,000 in just 48 hours — and then went on to yield four times that.
Singer explains the fillip to this endeavor in her compelling video: “There are over 85,000 industrial chemicals out there and the majority of ones that are in use today have never even been tested for safety. In fact, cleaning product manufacturers aren’t even legally required to list their ingredients on their packaging. So we really have no clue what’s in them.”
In contrast, The Simply Co. uses only three ingredients in its laundry detergent: baking soda, washing soda and castile soap. If you’re feeling crazy, you can go for the scented version with a fourth ingredient, deriving its lavender fragrance from organic essential oils.
So, for those of us who don’t have time for or are intimidated by the prospect of making our own cleaning products and feel guilty about being part of the problem, think about buying this planet-loving merchandise – but you’ll have to get in line because it’s already sold out.
MORE: Which Common Product Should You Wash Out of Your Laundry Room?
Tag: NYU
Meet the Man Who Believes Creativity Knows No Economic Boundaries
It’s the height of summer, and soon, back-to-school commercials will dominate our television screens.
Students won’t be the only ones hitting the books this coming semester, however, as New York University (NYU) just announced a new course load entitled “Initiative for Creativity and Innovation in Cities.” Created by Richard Florida, it aims to help city leaders make the creative field accessible for all economic classes.
That’s because in New York City, a city prized for its creative industry, 3 million residents don’t have home internet access. And in the Big Apple’s public schools, there is only one computer science teacher for every 11,000 students.
The goal? To teach city officials, nonprofit leaders and economic development professionals the tools to expand the wealth of the creative class to a greater and more diverse population. Included in this course is a class called “Tools and Techniques for Understanding Urban Economies,” which teaches how to correctly assess community assets.
Students will also have the opportunity to take “Principles of Economic Development,” which is anything but your normal economics class, as it focuses on how “technology, talent, tolerance and territorial assets” are the “strategy for competitiveness in the creative age.”
According to Florida’s interview with Next City, “I thought we could build an educational model that wasn’t so cloistered and was very much broader based” with a goal “to ‘preach the gospel of urbanism’ to a really broad group of people… This initiative is another mechanism for doing this.”
The boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn already experienced their boom, and Florida hopes this course will carry that growth to the people living in the area — from Staten Island to the Bronx. For many people in these communities and in the rest of the city, Florida cites low wages, not high rent as the main cause of economic immobility in NYC.
While the lucrative creative class remains an exclusive group, sending these city leaders back to school may break down those cliquey borders and promote inclusion in this broad city — or at the very least, set the wheels in motion.
MORE: Introducing the Newest Innovation in Higher Ed: The NanoDegree
Can Higher Education Be Free?
What are international would-be college students to do if they can’t afford the rising costs of a college education? Fortunately, for those that want to learn, a new university has just been accredited.
Fittingly called The University of the People, this four-year college is tuition-free and staffed mostly by volunteers from prestigious schools that charge a bit more, including Yale, NYU, and Stanford.
Israeli entrepreneur Shai Reshef opened the California-based college in 2009. With hopes to expand the curriculum, currently this college offers two- and four-year degrees in computer science and business administration. Students hail from 143 countries, and this month, seven students will become the first University of the People graduates.
Though perhaps you haven’t heard of it, tons of people have. Reshef told The National Journal that the University of the People has 1.2 million followers on Facebook, more than any other U.S. university except Harvard.
To join the college, students need to have a high school diploma, be proficient in English, and have an Internet connection. Even the Internet connectivity requirement is flexible — all lessons and conversations are posted in text form, so students without broadband don’t miss out on audio or video learning. Classes are nine weeks long and involve intensive virtual discussions, daily homework, weekly quizzes graded by international peers, and final exams overseen by a local proctor.
Earlier this year, the University of the People became an accredited university, recognized by the Department of Education. Reshef hopes that the accreditation will lead to more students, and ideally, more funding from philanthropists. By 2016, he hopes to have 5,000 students and raise $5 million.
“We’re building a model because we want to show that there is another way to deliver higher education,” Reshef told The National Journal. “It shouldn’t cost as much as it costs.” In addition to a volunteer base, the school uses open source technology and open education materials to keep costs at a minimum.
Students at the University of the People have the opportunity to meet and collaborate with hundreds of other students from around the globe. This cost-free, virtual education model is a promising way to get diplomas into the hands of some of the poorest students in the world.