Tuesday, September 8, 2015

The Crayon Initiative - Sawyer Kreikemeier

       A few days ago I was scrolling through reddit and noticed a post on the front page about a dad who had found a way to reuse old crayons. For some reason I clicked on the post, as had a lot of previous redditors prior to me, and began to read the article. 
      The article said that a father had been in a restaurant with his kids and was watching them as they drew with the restaurant crayons and then proceeded to ask the waiter what happens to all the crayons after their customers leave. The waiter replied that all the crayons either used or unused had to be thrown away. With this thought in his head he began gathering crayons from different restaurants and melting them into new ones. 
      After networking with many different restaurants, making new connections and meeting new people his simple oral question had soon developed into a project called the crayon initiative. The crayon initiative recycles old crayons, generally from restaurants and schools, to make new crayons for kids in hospitals and those that can not afford them. After networking with many people and eventually creating a web presence through social media and other online outlets the crayon initiative was a success. This goes to show how powerful social media and the internet have become in our lives and how it can make us aware of things we would not have been aware of had we not had this tool.  
      After I had clicked I started to think how interesting it is that on the internet people seem to generally be attracted to a lot of the same stories and posts. Popular topics on one site are usually popular on a different site. However, often when I read through the comments of a post I realize that although we are all attracted to the same things we all have very different opinions about them. The internet allows us to discuss these things and share new ideas with people. One of these ideas would be the crayon initiative.

http://themighty.com/2015/09/this-dad-found-a-wonderful-use-for-restaurants-leftover-crayons/

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