Linked to our unit on ocean plastics and consumption.
Description:
What do you learn when you sail around the world on your own?
When solo sailor Ellen MacArthur circled the globe – carrying everything she needed with her – she came back with new insight into the way the world works, as a place of interlocking cycles and finite resources, where the decisions we make today affect what's left for tomorrow. She proposes a bold new way to see the world's economic systems: not as linear, but as circular, where everything comes around.
The Washing Machine Project was founded in 2019 by British, ex-Dyson, Engineer Navjot Sawhney. After leaving Dyson, he moved to South India to make cookstoves with Engineers Without Borders UK, where he met his neighbour Divya. Divya's struggle with everyday tasks inspired Navjot to find a solution. He promised her a washing machine, and when he went back home, he developed the first prototype.
Excellent @thewashorg on local news tonight - check out https://t.co/lRqvpShsT5 to add an extra updated element to those teaching about @Gapminder Hans and the 'Magic Washing Machine' video - great work!
Since then, The Washing Machine Project has conducted ethnographic research in 17 countries, interviewing over 3,000 families, including Uganda, Jamaica, Nepal, India and the Philippines, to gain insight into their washing tendencies. The Washing Machine Project has partnered up with some of the most prominent international NGOs, such as UNCHR, Save The Children, Oxfam, Care International and Plan International.
The Washing Machine Project has successfully carried out pilots in Iraq and Lebanon and received orders from multiple countries in excess of 3,000 washing machines. In 2023 The Washing Machine Project’s plans are to fulfil these orders and scale up across numerous countries.
The Washing Machine Project has the vision to create a world-leading organisation, which brings together Innovation, Research and Development to solve some of the world’s most pressing humanitarian and development challenges.
By providing displaced and low-income communities with an accessible, off-grid washing solution, our mission is to empower women with the time to take charge of their lives.
This would make a great addition to the work we do on Han's Rosling's 'Magic Washing Machine' TED Talk, to explore a sustainable alternative to washing by hand. Great work!
"Getting informed consent from 7.8 billion people who have no voice and no say, who are subject to the potentially catastrophic consequences of this wackadoodle proposal that somebody comes up with to try to rearrange the entire Earth's atmosphere and hope and pretend that it's going to cancel out the fact that we're putting 152 million tons of heat trapping manmade global warming pollution into the sky, every day that's what's really insane."
New from TED for June 2020.
An important interview with Al Gore.
I remember 'An Inconvenient Truth'.
The coronavirus brought much of the world to a standstill, dropping carbon emissions by five percent. Al Gore says keeping those rates down is now up to us. In this illuminating interview, he discusses how the steadily declining cost of wind and solar energy will transform manufacturing, transportation and agriculture, offer a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear energy and create millions of new jobs. Stay tuned for a lively debate about geoengineering and hear Gore's thoughts about how humanity can create a clean, prosperous future through a focused global effort and a generation of young people committed to change.
(This virtual conversation, hosted by head of TED Chris Anderson, was recorded June 23, 2020.)
We've been using Dollar Street with Year 7 and Year 8 groups to explore the inequalities in access to food and other items in homes with differing levels of income.
The students have been fascinated by the images that Dollar Street offers, and we have been asking them to explore the 'stuff' that is owned by the families and whether there are thresholds to owning an object such as a washing machine (see the Hans Rosling video on this topic to see how important it is)
I've put together a resource for Geography teachers (and others) on how to use Dollar Street in the classroom.
It's not finished yet, but is a collaborative Google Drive document which will hopefully grow... You're very welcome to add your own ideas to this document... It's embedded below for your interest...
Following on from that, Anna from Gapminder gave a TED Talk a while ago, and that is now available to view.
