Name: Oren Casriel

Social Justice Group: 2022-2023, Environment: Microplastics

Date of Fieldwork: December 11, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Bard’s 2022 Disrupt to Sustain Social Impact Pitch Competition Powered by RebelBase

Type of Fieldwork: We watched graduate students pitch a their buisness plans

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :

Graydon and I watched Graduate students pitch their business plans in a business competition all about the environment and sustainability. I saw 5 30 minute presentations and while none of them were about microplastics specifically, I learned a lot and watching people present something they are very passionate about was really cool. My favorite company was all about collecting excess rain to water people’s lawns. Their idea was people would order their produce and they would come and install it for you. whenever it rained their system would collect the water and direct it into your water line going to the sprinklers in your garden and lawn. I learned that maintaining the ideal “american” lawn costs upwards of $10,000 every single year. In places like New Jersey people are only allowed to use a certain amount of water because they often have shortages. Because of this people cannot water their lawn occasionally and you can probably see why this is problematic, the grass would die and it would cost a huge amount of money to fix. Their system is made with off the shelf components from places like The Home Depot so they can easily make them and customize them to their customer’s needs. There was another group whose idea was to take excess coffee grinds from cafes and other places and get paid to do so. They would then use those coffee grinds and put them in soap instead of little pieces of plastic (microplastics) so you could get the same scrubbing effect without the plastic.