This past week Keep Philadelphia Beautiful, along with our friends at the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, played a small role in the Temple Fox School of Business’s fourth annual design challenge – which was focused on finding solutions to the litter problem in our City. One hundred and seventy five students, representing over 20 disciplines and five universities, were divided in to twenty teams and worked together to devise innovative means of tackling the City’s litter problem. Those ideas were then scored by a panel of judges and a winner was selected.
For us and the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, though, our work has only begun. We’ll be looking for ways to use the ideas developed throughout the competition as we work to reduce the amount of litter on our streets. We’ll also be working to keep the students involved in this year’s challenge engaged; having close to 200 smart and trained individuals thinking about the litter problem is no small feat, and we want to keep them involved as we continue our work and outreach.
In short – Keep Philadelphia Beautiful and the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics are excited, and ready to do the necessary follow up work. As we do so, we want to hear from you (as always!); shoot us an email at michelle@keepphiladelphiabeautiful.org, or give us a call at 215-854-4000 with ideas, comments, concerns.
Our thanks, of course, go out to the Fox School for including us in this process – we are grateful to have been a part of this wonderful event, and know that it will help to advance our conversation and actions around litter and community beautification in Philadelphia.
