Posted 05/01/08 by Ryan Morris
In a previous blog post I mentioned that Americans toss almost 38 billion water bottles in the trash every year. To combat this environmental waste, Brita (you know, the folks who make those cool water filtration products for your home) and Nalgene (check any college student's backpack for one of their fashionable water bottles) teamed up to create the FilterForGood campaign.
The success of the campaign is determined by the number of disposable water bottles saved from ending up in your local dump. The environmentally conscious endeavor requires participants to pledge to reduce bottled water waste by using a reusable water bottle (Nalgene, encouraged) or filtered water (this is where Brita's pitchers and faucet mount filters come in.)
I was very excited when I learned about the pledge, so naturally I signed it online and began taking steps to become an active participant. The FilterForGood folks were stoked too and sent us some reusable water bottles for the staff to use along with a few faucet-mount filtration systems to give away.
Get Free Stuff, Save the Planet
Leave a comment at the bottom of this entry describing ways you plan to get the word out about reducing disposable water bottle use. The top three comments will receive a Brita faucet-mount filtration system. Oh, if you're wondering who will be judging the comments, look no further than Razoo's celebrity panel of super heros and rock stars, of course. ;-)
To track the success of the campaign you can view how many water bottles have been saved by using an interactive map on the campaign Web site.
Links of Interest
Posted 07/13/07 by Robin Weekley
Braddigan sat in the backseat of a car, camera in hand, positioned to catch images of the smoldering trash as they pulled through the dump. The drive itself wasn’t a new thing for Brad Corrigan, lead singer of the band Braddigan and former member of Dispatch. He’d visited Nicaragua many times before with friends and family and the country continued to draw him inexplicably into its darker places, including Managua’s city dump, La Chureca. In every direction, residents of La Chureca moved up and down on waves of trash, trailing behind dump trucks as they drove past, waiting to see what recyclables, fixables and other treasures they could recover.
A little girl with disarming eyes and a draping, lilac tank top knocked on Braddigan’s window. She smiled and introduced herself as Ileana. Brad replied in broken Spanish, “Con mucho gusto,” (nice to meet you). She pointed to her house that sat at the corner of two divergent roads through the dump, feet away from spontaneously burning waste, where she lived with her mom, brothers and sisters. “Cuantos anos tienes?” (how old are you?) Brad asked. “Catorce,” (fourteen) she responded with a deep laugh. Brad followed closely behind Ileana, spending hours hanging out with her family in the clearing in front of their small house, surrounded by the dump’s ever-present and suffocating smoke. Brad turned to a close friend, Jonathan, who sat filming the encounter and said, “There’s hope and light in this family…they’re all laughter.”
Since that day, Braddigan has devoted hours to walking alongside Ileana through the dump, gaining a deeper understanding of the residents of La Chureca, the life they live and the struggles they face each day. Perched along the shores of Lake Managua, La Chureca rises steeply from the water into hills of hazy waste. People, children and families alike, enter the dump every day to work and seek survival by hunting through piles of trash for anything of value. Approximately 150 of these families make their home in the dump, in lean-to’s and small houses made of materials recovered from the trash. Another 1,500 people commute to and from the dump each day to work. Disease and malnutrition run rampant throughout the dump, but so does hope. Where there should be darkness, the light of a smile or a laugh from Ileana and other children illuminates everything. Where there’s struggle, love seeps in and breaks through the seemingly desolate landscape.
This March marked the launch Love, Light and Melody, a non-profit organization created by Braddigan. This organization is “dedicated to battling the physical, emotional, and spiritual affects of extreme poverty found there. Love, Light & Melody is committed to becoming expert on the life and culture inside the dump, identifying and meeting the immediate physical needs, raising awareness about and fighting social injustice, and using music and the arts to rebuild, restore, and bring healing to La Chureca and other communities ravaged by extreme poverty.” (from: lovelightandmelody.org)
On March 6th, 2007, the introduction of Dia De Luz (Day of Light), over 500 people—college students, volunteers and Nicaraguans—walked through the dump together, side by side with the residents who live there. The groups helped collect recyclable trash, played soccer and shared hugs as they journeyed from the entrance of La Chureca to a rundown soccer field where Braddigan would perform at the end of the day. Everyone was covered in dust from head to toe; it was impossible to distinguish between gringo and La Chureca resident. Braddigan played from the bed of a flat bed truck parked beneath a mountain of refuse and everyone danced for hours, kids on their shoulders, children climbing all over the stage and the sun setting slowly amidst the dust and smoke. Ileana stood in the crowd below, singing along to the songs Brad had played for her many times before, a bright smile spread across her face.
Braddigan wasn’t looking for Ileana when she found him. He simply continued to show up and his passion found him in the form of a 14 yr. old girl in a trash dump, a moment that would steal his heart and propel him into a life dedicated to using whatever gifts he has to help. Currently, Braddigan returns to Nicaragua about once a month to work with Love, Light and Melody and spend time with the Nicaraguans he has come to know and love as family. Love, Light and Melody is actively creating opportunities for positive change within La Chureca and within the hearts of all those who have visited the dump with them over the last two years.
To hear the rest of the story and to meet Ileana, check out Love, Light & Melody
Support Love, Light & Melody by joining Razoo's goal of the month -- Razoo will donate $1 for everyone participating in the goal. It's easy -- you can do it today!
Check out this sneak peek from Braddigan’s new album, coming out September 2007.
Posted 07/13/07 by Robin Weekley
Nica HOPE is a new nonprofit that seeks to provide education and vocational training to marginalized communities in Nicaragua, including the trash dump community of La Chureca. The founders of Nica HOPE met down in Nicaragua in the spring and summer of 2006. Through their time and work there together, they came to realize the need for a program that would provide real opportunities for impoverished communities to improve their own life situations through self-motivated effort. They saw that handouts only bred dependence. This project is the result of all the ideas and desire for change brewing over this past year among friends, to help create sustainable and long-term solutions to entrenched poverty in Central America's poorest country. Check out NicaHOPE.
Posted 07/13/07 by Robin Weekley
Manna Project International is an organization that brings groups of students and young people down to developing countries to ignite their passion for service through hands on experience and interaction with communities in need. MPI Nicaragua currently leads a child sponsorship program in the Managua city trash dump and assisted in securing funding for the health clinic that is located in that community. To learn more, check out Manna Project.
Posted 07/12/07 by Robin Weekley
Naples, a well-known and well-loved tourist destination for people all over the place is in a bit of a compromising situation. Due to government disorder and a flurry of organized crime, the trash has not been picked up since May. I know, it’s a little hard to understand how trash pick up and organized crime go together, but apparently…the Naples mob crew owns a few of the city dumps and has shut them down, thus bringing on a crazy flow of trash all over the city streets. Residents are protesting and the local government is doing its best to procure new landfill sites in the surrounding areas; they’ve even considered shipping their trash to other countries. Romania was their pick for lucky trash recipient, but, unfortunately for Naples, Romania turned down the generous offer.
The US Embassy in Rome has issued a warning to US Citizens saying:
"US citizens traveling to or through the area may encounter mounds of garbage, open fires with potentially toxic fumes and sporadic public demonstrations by local residents," the embassy warns in its advisory note.”
Yummy…Toxic fumes. This whole story really spotlights the amount of trash we produce n a regular basis. When the trash doesn’t get picked up and instead forms walls along city streets, garbage takes on a new relevance in our lives. What you throw away is no longer lost and gone, but is in your face, reminding you of the Oreos you ate last night, the 20 magazines you got in the mail and never read or the plastic bags you carted home from the grocery store.
To learn more about Naples and what really happened behind the trash disaster there, check out this article from the BBC.
Posted 07/11/07 by Robin Weekley
Artist Katherine Hubbard is making good of the trash she produces. Using her consumption as an interesting social and anthropological experiment, Katherine collected her trash and examined it, via photography, for one year. What resulted are some really sweet photographs and intriguing insight into the patterns of our daily life and habits.
GOOD magazine’s got the story here.
