Category Archives: Easy Activism

AquaClara – Something You Should Love

Posted by Adam Weiler on October 29, 2011

Printing t-shirts has its perks. Aside from losing weight sweating next to a 300+ degree conveyor dryer during the summer you get to meet extraordinary people doing world changing things. Scott and Claire Rumpsa are two of those people that we’ve grown to call friends and over the past few years we’ve been fortunate enough to play a super small part (pulling squeegees) to help out AquaClara, a Michigan based 501(c)3 with a mission to provide clean water for people living on less than $2 per day.

We asked Claire to tell us a little bit more about AquaClara…

T-shirts are a big deal in Kenya. People love getting a t-shirt when there is a political campaign or a special event and wear them proudly for years to come. We wanted the Aqua Clara t-shirts to be special, so we called our good friends at Ambrose. The t-shirts say “Maji Safi” which means ‘clean water in Kiswahili. The people in the blue t-shirts are our Community Development Entrepreneurs (CDEs). Aqua Clara trains the CDEs to make, sell and maintain simple water filters and safe water storage containers for their local community. Soon we’ll be training the CDEs on how to make rainwater harvesting systems and cool composting latrines. The lovely women in the yellow t-shirts are our Community Health Promoters (CHPs) and they visit the people who buy water filters to make sure that everything is working properly and also to train the women in the households about simple hygiene improvements that can help keep their families healthy. The Ambrose t-shirts are now the official uniform for Aqua Clara in Kenya and we are grateful for the lovely people who made them.

Thanks to Scott and Claire and the whole AquaClara team for partnering with us! Check out AquaClara for more info on how you can get involved.

The Heidelberg Project

Posted by Adam Weiler on August 4, 2010

My friend John Rumery (GR based barbecue guru and champion of all things Grilladelic) just passed on an inspiring NY Times article about the role creativity is playing in rejuvenation of Detroit. Oh. My. Gosh. If the internet hasn’t fine tuned your link-clicking skills this would be an excellent time to introduce yourself to the simple pleasure of digitally submerging yourself in the amazing things people are doing in our state. Read the article. Click to your heart’s content. Learn about awesome stuff like The Heidelberg Project, Design 99 and the Power House. Detroitus no more! Get inspired!

PS. Does anybody know of an old, abandoned, centrally located house we could have? Jonathan? Jeannette?

The Story of Bottled Water

Posted by Becca on March 25, 2010

So, March 22, was World Water Day. Sadly, it came and went and I gave it little consideration to it. No other substance on earth has given so much life but costs so little. That’s not always the case though, depending on how you get it. This week Annie Leonard and her team came about with the above video focusing on America’s unbridled consumption of bottled water. In 2007 our country spent $15+ billion on the stuff. That’s almost twice as much as it would take to provide sanitary drinking water for everyone in the third world. Dang. The video is pretty good, if you like being convicted. Drastically shorter than the original Story of Stuff, it’s definitely worth eight minutes of your time to watch and even more for careful consideration. For me the most startling fact was that every week Americans purchase over 500 million bottles of water which, if lined up end to end, would circle the earth five times. FIVE TIMES IN ONE WEEK! Actually, a bottles is lucky to travel the world once or twice before ending up in a landfill overseas not far from where it’s production cycle began.

Convicted.

Just the other day I met with Jim Kast-Keat over beverages at Lemonjellos. He’s an energetic writer and a self professed pathological optimist. All that, and he has an uncanny ability to pull of skinny ties. Yup, I’m jealous. Every year he embarks on projects that stretch his comfort zone while challenging him to live a fuller / more present life and 2010 is no different. One of the things he’s attempting to do is drink 100 ounces of water a day and, I’ve gotta tell you, I’m thinking about joining him. That’s the equivalent of 3,041.6 bottles (285 gals) of water this year alone which, if he were to purchase from Aquafina or Dasani (purified tap water) would cost infinitely more than the $20ish it would cost to purchase it from the City of Holland via the tap. Wild. 20 bucks to hydrate for a year. All that and it keeps our landfills less, uh, full. Done; but if I have to purchase it I’ll be sure to ask for it Boxed.

We just fell in love…with Project M

Posted by Becca on March 23, 2010

This morning Shawn and I got together to talk art + design + convictions + etc. He’s a senior at Kendall this year majoring in Graphic Design, and he is awesome. A mutual point of interest is not wanting to use our abilities to manufacture perceived needs for objects which people have no need for. Instead we’d prefer (and who wouldn’t) to use our powers for the benefit of our community. Towards the end of our conversation he told me to check out Project M, a group doing just that. It was love at first site (hehe) and after clicking around I concluded that Project M looks to be the most amazing summer experience a young creative could ask for.

“Project M is an intensive summer program designed to inspire young graphic designers, writers, photographers and other creative people that their work can have a positive and significant impact on the world.”

So, to all you young designers wanting to make a larger impact than the ecological footprint of glossy package remnants piled in a landfill somewhere I strongly encourage you to apply for their summer program! In fact, I’ll make it easy. Here’s a copy of the application…it’s due April 30. GET A MOVE ON, ALREADY!

Aqua Clara

Posted by Adam Weiler on September 16, 2009

aquaclara-tees

The most transforming book to come across my desk the past months has been EF Shumacher’s Small is Beautiful. Whether you’ve heard of it or not you should drop $2.99 and get your hands on a used copy. Originally published in 1973 (during the emergency crisis and the early emergence of globalization) this series of essays helped spread Schumacher’s critique of western economic thought and practice. While reading it I couldn’t help but kick myself as he’s pretty much predicted the current zeitgeist. Some excerpts:

The most striking about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one’s ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed.

A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption…. The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity.

Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.

Prior to Saturday’s Global-Local Waterfest we met with Scott Rumpsa (pictured above looking dapper) and his wife regarding Aqua Clara; a clean water organization set out to development impoverished regions in a non-crippling-kinda-way. With a focus on sustainability, appropriate technology, and local ownership I’ve gotta believe EF Shumacher would be grinning in his grave. They use indigenous tools, materials, labor and (most importantly) desire to build simple containers that filter (via layers of rock and sand) up to 40 liters of safe drinking water daily. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the whole unit costs around $8 US to construct on site. Brilliant and super accessible. We were honored to design and print some tees for them, and we’re also super excited about some things in the works. Until then, head over to their website and get your learn on.

Note: the top-right design above is a shout out to Experimental Jetset. Check out their site for some context.