Green U 2012 Speakers: Andy Ruben

Hello everyone! I hope you have had a lovely new year thus far! About a month ago, I attended Green University as a finalist for Project Green Challenge. On the first day of Green U, we all arrived, had eco makeovers, our photo shoot, and participated in the community dinner. It was such a great day and a truly spellbinding experience. However, the second day was really cool because we had the joy of listening to 15 different speakers who have all done amazing things in the realm of sustainability! I felt so inspired! It sort of felt like a TED conference, since each speaker was allowed to talk for about 10 minutes, and after each session, we were paired up with other finalists, so I was with Natalie, and we had the chance to talk one on one to nearly all of the speakers, which was perhaps the most meaningful part of the whole experience. Getting the chance to connect with someone who shared our passion but had valuable experiences and connections was so educational and inspirational! In this post, and in many others, I will highlight different speakers from Green U, and share a little bit about what they talked about.

The first speaker of the day was Andy Ruben, who is the founder of yerdle.com, an amazing site that is founded on the principle of collaborative consumption, or sharing of goods, so instead of each having all of our own products and sending them to a landfill when we are done with them, we can share with our friends and other people we know. An excellent point he made that stuck with me was that we often get caught up in excitement when a greener alternative of a certain product we use is created, but we still continue to consume that product, even when it doesn't really have to be necessary. A specific example of this that he used in his presentation was a new type of plastic fork that has a hollow middle part, which means it has 13% less plastic than it's conventional counterparts. While this is truly a step in the right direction in the plastic fork world, isn't a much better alternative to just stop using plastic forks?

He also addressed how, while he was initially working for sustainability at Walmart, he found it was very easy for people to tear the company or certain initiatives down, but much more difficult for them to  take action. It was an interesting place to be in since Walmart is such a big corporation, and he said it was tough for him to think if it was a fundamentally good or bad company. Finally, Ruben described that he loves the start-up world and the process of innovation, which is what led him to help create Yerdle, since 80% of the stuff in the average house is used just once a month. Another cool resource I discovered from Ruben's presentation was AIRBNB, which is an alternative to the traditional hotel experience by using places that already exist, such as people's spare rooms in their homes or apartments.

I hope to continue posting more about the speakers in the upcoming days. You can see more information and photos about all of the speakers here.

Also, if you want to read more about the other finalists or watch their presentation videos, click here.