http://www.care2.com/greenliving/can-your-idea-change-the-world.html
Community Brainstorm: Can Your Idea Change the World?
By Veronica Peterson, Editor, Healthy & Green Living
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
We all know the Gandhi quote and never has it rung more true than the today, as we see the butterfly effect of a single action having repercussions far and wide. What better time than the present, when the internet has given lightening speed to our ideas and the greatest minds of our time can be easily accessed through a few key strokes, to use our technology for the greater good–as a participatory exchange of ideas?
While pondering this, I discovered the “Why Not?” Innovation Experience (sponsored by Care2 advertiser Toyota), in which they are asking all of us to contribute our best ideas for water conservation, air purification, land preservation, community involvement and alternative energy development. Reading through some of the entries I became inspired that maybe, from tiny seedlings of ideas like these, larger movements are born. Here are some of the submissions:
Water
“Let’s invent an easy way to collect gray water from homes with septic tanks (i.e. clothes and dish washing, showers) into a separate holding tank for filtering and reuse in outside activities (garden/yard water, bird baths, etc.).”
Land
“Plant more trees–they produce what we need–and it should be law that for every tree removed for any reason another should be planted close to the same area (the same kind of tree).”
Community
“As a single father paying $188 a week for daycare, I would like to see more companies offer a daycare service or discount. That would allow for so much extra money to save for retirement, emergencies and my child’s college fund.”
Air
“A greenhouse/solarium attached to the south side of an existing or new home can provide heat, hot water, improved air quality, and added living space. My working model in Utah provides 80 percent of the heat for my home and the next one will be even better. When building our new home–we will even use the sun to cool the space and make electricity. Solar homes are not a new idea. Some of those cliff dwellings in the South West were solar homes as were the New England salt boxes. We have to look back before going forward!”
Energy
“Create a string of gyms, where members exercise on equipment that gathers electricity from the stationary bikes and other recapturing systems. Other considerations–they could be social centers, with a trove of information about energy, healthy living, etc.”
Walt Whitman said, “The genius of the world is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people”. My “common person” idea? An overhaul of the entire public transportation industry. By following examples of some successful countries, we can make trains and buses more readily available and also pleasant places to be. What’s yours? You can share by clicking on the video below.
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22 comments
add your comment »OK, I can gol with that. Hook the bikes and get going
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"Create a string of gyms, where members exercise on equipment that gathers electricity from the stationary bikes and other recapturing systems."
In many countries, past and present, people have used animals to walk on "treadmill" type simple machines, or to turn mills to grind grain, etc.....with all the multitudes of people working out in gyms, what a wonderful idea to harness their energy, to at least power the building itself. Such a simple thing to do. What a waste if it is not...
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have been listening to KLRU - the McLaughlin Group – on the Education proposals of the Obama Adm. and Duncan, new Secretary of Ed.
I am beginning to wish I could stop the world and get off! Not only so, but I recall my interactions with people in the Education Grad School of UT – School Adm, Curriculum and Instruction, etc. and chatting with grad students in Teacher Training, and later as teachers, and I thought “How did these people acquire this mentality that is so mechanistic, assembly line, business model, every kid is just another widget whose minds are to be shaped to meet corporate, military, and country goals?”
No one within the walls of Education departments and Gov Dept of Ed believes in allowing the kids to work at the own level, go at their own pace, develop their own intrinsic motivation.
You can, however, find that in the Quaker schools. Quaker school graduates are frantically sought after by the best universities in spite of their having no grade sheets or test scores by which to evacuate their qualifications. Now why do you suppose that is? I found that the Quaker Model, in combination with self-paced computerized teaching and curriculum, worked miracles with incarcerated delinquent felons from disadvantaged and ethnic minority backgrounds. Also, over twenty years ago, Courtney Cazden, Prof at Harvard grad school, found the same thing when researching on elementary school kids. Shelley Brice Heath, PhD natural environment re
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We can convert all power stations to clean geothermal energy by digging a ten kilometre deep lined and capped water well. The temperature of the cap is three times boiling point, the temperature at which electricity is generated. The conversion of all UK power stations is half the cost of one new build nuclear power station.
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Love all that has been suggested so far. For me, I tend to look at food containers for a second use, i.e. yoghurt pots can be used to start plants in. An old ice cream tub stores my pens and gives me nice memories of when I ate the contents :-). A ceramic pate dish, has become a cat water bowl. You get the idea. Hope you have lots of fun finding ways to reuse what would otherwise have been sent to the rubbish tip.
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The Earth can Heal itsself if We give if We give it a chance. But if We comtinue to Polute the Earths Atmosphere and use up the Earths Natural Resorses the way We did for the Past 109 Years,We are Doomed.
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TALK LESS, WORK MORE, SAVE MORE.
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Wonderful ideas! Thanks everyone for sharing!
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I think all of these ideas are great and pragmatic.
When I read the questions: "Can your idea change the world?" my inner asnwer was:
"It always does."
It is like that idea of the idea of the butterfly that flaps its wings and causes a tornado 1000 miles away.
Each of our thoughts changes the world--our world and our perception of reality. All of these fixes are wonderful, but I'd like to pose the idea that by continually being mindful and present we change the world for the positive in a much bigger way than changing lightbulbs or some such small fix. By being present and mindful all of these other pragmatic solutions happen by our right/correct action and function. There is nothing wrong with pragmatic solutions to problems. They are valuable. But I think that if we are truly present and mindful all of those solutions and much much more will appear through our state of being.
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Here's something we can all do every day, every time you pick up a fork. Simply change your diet to a healthy plant-based diet and stop eating the toxic meat and dairy foods. The meat industry causes almost 40% more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world's transportation systems combined. In other words, all cars, buses, trains, planes, and ships combined. So whilst our government promotes switching lights off and not leaving anything on standby to help fight global warming, the easiest and most effective way you can help our planet is by adopting a vegan—diet. The truth is, a vegan driving a hummer is polluting less than a flesh eater riding a bicycle. Plus there's more protein and calcium in many plants and it's protein that the body absorbs and recognizes better than from animal products. Yeah!! How easy is that. So 3 times a day you choose to contribute to pollution or not. I stopped eating all meat and dairy over a year ago and I've never felt better!
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