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Photo: Shreya Ramachandran, via Discover Magazine
By Ashira Morris, ODP Staff Writer
Today we’re celebrating Shreya Ramachandran, a 17-year-old Californian who came up with an efficient way to reuse grey water — the water first used for sinks, showers, and laundry machines — for irrigation. She was spurred to take action after living through a water crisis as a preteen. When her grandmother brought soap nuts, the dried brown shell of the soapberry, from their native India, Ramachandran started thinking about how they could be part of the solution.
“I was using them as a shampoo, and I was thinking, ‘Okay, if they can be used for this purpose, maybe soap nuts can be used as an alternative laundry detergent as well. And then we can reuse the water because soap nuts are all natural,’”she told Discover Magazine.
Ramachandran took over her parents’ bedroom to experiment, proving that plants could grow healthfully using water from the soapberry wash cycles but not with conventional detergent water. She’s since founded her own nonprofit, The Grey Water Project, which educates people about reusing water and developed a science curriculum on the topic that more than 90 schools teach. Her next step? A degree in environmental science and public policy so that her research can turn into solutions that get implemented.
Recently, Transportation for America’s Director Beth Osborne sat down to speak with former Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx (now, Chief Policy Officer at Lyft) about how a massive investment in infrastructure can address inequality and provide innovative transportation solutions for a multitude of communities. From micro mobility, to reassessing freeways, and the expansion of public transit, […]
Continue Reading 485 wordsThis week we sat down with Congressman Ted Lieu who represents California’s 33rd Congressional district. His district also happens to be one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the nation where wildfires, extreme heat, and sea-level rise are creating conditions that necessitate comprehensive climate action from the federal government. More specifically, the Congressman told us […]
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by Amy Lupica, ODP Staff Writer As the nation moves past President Biden’s first 100 days, hopes are that the green energy future can begin to take shape more tangibly. Yet despite the green jobs promises of the American Jobs Plan, some communities still feel cut off from the new green economy. For Indigenous communities, a […]
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