Included below are some of the topics discussed in the body of the website. Attached to each topic are statements that can be read here or looked into further by clicking on the links. Some are just facts. But others, like Boyan Slat and iCons are real stories of real people taking action and making things happen. The power of creative youth when it can work alongside the business community.
College student enrollment
College students solving real world problems. There is a proven market history for it.
The creative power of youth
Foundations at work
The state of the worlds oceans
Japanese and shark finning
The largest companies in the world & number or employees
College student enrollment:
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
...In fall 2014, some 21.0 million students are expected to attend American colleges and universities, constituting an increase of about 5.7 million since fall 2000
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120216105739999
...The number of students around the globe enrolled in higher education is forecast to more than double to 262 million by 2025.
...By capitalizing on this and attracting hundreds of thousands of foreign students to its institutions, Australia showed other Western countries how profitable selling education could be.
http://chronicle.com/article/Chart-More-College-Students/48516/
...2007 world wide enrollment = 150 million college students
http://college-education.procon.org
...19 million college students in the US, 2013
College students solving real world problems. There is a proven market for it.
https://www.honors.umass.edu/braggingwrites/icons-students-solve-real-world-problems-together
...The Integrated Concentration in Science, more commonly known as the iCons program, first became available to students in 2010. iCons is an 18-credit academic program through the College of Natural Sciences with tracks in renewable energy and biomedicine. The four-course program offers one course in the spring of the first, sophomore, and junior years and culminates in a yearlong independent research project during senior year. This project often becomes Commonwealth Honors College students’ Honors Thesis. iCons is open to all students majoring in fields across the sciences and provides participants with an opportunity to gain valuable problem-solving skills.
http://news.emory.edu/stories/2012/09/goizueta_project_based_courses/campus.html
..GMSC became an official source in the Full-Time MBA program in 2000, taught and led by Reshma H. Shah, assistant professor in the practice of marketing. Over 1,500 students and nearly 90 companies from across the globe have participated in the program since its inception in 1991. Many companies have participated in the program multiple times as repeat clients, reflecting the value they derive from working with Emory Goizueta students.
http://www.smcvt.edu/accelerated-summer-college/course-catalog/organizational-problem-solving.aspx
...Students will choose among the following types of organizations (see descriptions below): a software development firm, an outdoor sports equipment company, a financial services company, a food service company working on sustainability, and non-profit social service providers.
The creative power of youth:
…Working to prove the feasibility of his concept, Boyan Slat (1994), has given lead to a team of 100 people, and temporarily quit his Aerospace Engineering study to completely focus his efforts on The Ocean Cleanup
In 2012, The Ocean Cleanup Array has been awarded Best Technical Design at the Delft University of Technology. Boyan Slat has been recognized as one of the 20 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs Worldwide (Intel EYE50).
http://www.theoceancleanup.com
...The plastic pollution problem
- Millions of tons of plastic have entered the oceans (UNEP 2005)
- Plastic concentrates in five rotating currents, called gyres (Maximenko et al., 2012)
- In these gyres there is on average six times more plastic than zooplankton by dry weight (Moore et al., 2001)
The Ocean Cleanup works to develop world’s first feasible method to clean the gyres of plastic, using the currents to our advantage.
http://www.world-petroleum.org/index.php?/Press-Releases/youth-paris.html
..."Young talent, knowledge and perspectives are vital for the world to solve our future energy challenge," said WPC President Dr. Randy Gossen when launching the initiative in December 2007. "Youth is one of the key issues for the 60 member countries of the World Petroleum Council (WPC).
...Creativity and innovation was on display at the Youth Innovation and Creativity Summit held on Friday January 24, at the Hekima Institute of Peace Studies.
...Teams from the centre travelled to various counties to identify youth with existing talents within their specific contexts with an aim to guiding them to innovatively improve on their ideas by providing them with technical and professional skills.
Foundations at work:
http://www.tboonepickensfoundation.org/about_foundation.asp
...The T. Boone Pickens Foundation improves lives through grants supporting education, medical research/development and services, athletics and corporate wellness, at-risk youths, the entrepreneurial process, conservation and wildlife programs and a wide-range of public policy initiatives.
http://oceana.org/en/about-us/leadership/ocean-council
...Oceans cover 71 percent of the globe and they are as important to us as they are vast. Not only do they control our climate, they are an essential source of protein for nearly half the people of the world. They drive our economies.
...In the last few decades, we have seen the benefits of restored rivers and lakes – for ecological and economic health – in many parts of the world. We can reap the same benefits from healthy oceans. We can restore ocean ecosystems that will sustain us, entertain us, amaze us and generate jobs around the world for centuries to come.
http://www.turnerfoundation.org/contact/thank-you/
...In fact Turner believes so emphatically in protecting the environment from further degradation that he views it as no less than, "an effort to ensure the survival of the human species." To that end, the Foundation was created in 1990 and is committed to preventing damage to the natural systems - water, air, and land - on which all life depends.
The state of the worlds oceans:
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/fisheries/fisheries.html
Fish stocks of the world and world wide exploitation
Sustained yield of the worlds oceans
http://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-2/fisheries/illegal-fishing/
...There are insufficient and inadequately trained personnel in the relevant authorities.
- The authorities’ motivation to invest in relevant personnel is poor. Financially weak states set other priorities.
- Salaries are low, and vessel owners take advantage of this situation to make irregular payments to observers/ fisheries administrators to cover up their activities.
- The purchase, maintenance and operational costs of patrol boats and aircraft are very high. For effective control, there must be sufficient time spent out at sea or in the air. However, in some states, even though they are available, they are not operational due to logistical problems – lack of fuel, proper maintenance regime, etc.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120920-are-we-running-out-of-fish
...Global fish stocks are exploited or depleted to such an extent that without urgent measures we may be the last generation to catch food from the oceans.
...Large areas of seabed in the Mediterranean and North Sea now resemble a desert – the seas have been expunged of fish using increasingly efficient methods such as bottom trawling. And now, these heavily subsidised industrial fleets are cleaning up tropical oceans too. One-quarter of the EU catch is now made outside European waters, much of it in previously rich West African seas, where each trawler can scoop up hundreds of thousands of kilos of fish in a day.
...Farms are stocked with wild fish, which must then be fed – larger fish like salmon and tuna eat as much as 20 times their weight in smaller fish like anchovies and herring. This has led to overfishing of these smaller fish, but if farmed fish are fed a vegetarian diet, they lack the prized omega-3 oils that make them nutritious, and they do not look or taste like the wild varieties.
...Fish farms are also highly polluting. They produce a slurry of toxic run-off – manure – which fertilises algae in the oceans, reducing the oxygen available to other species and creates dead zones. Scotland's salmon-farming industry, for example, produces the same amount of nitrogen waste as the untreated sewage of 3.2 million people – over half the country's population.
...Exotic sea creatures from turtles to manta ray to marine mammals are being hunted to extinction. Shark numbers, for example, have declined by 80% worldwide, with one-third of shark species now at risk of extinction. The top marine predator is no longer the shark, it’s us.
...Meanwhile, trawlers are netting bycatch that include marine mammals and even seabirds – as many as 320,000 seabirds are being killed annually when they get caught in fishing lines, pushing populations of albatrosses, petrels and shearwaters to the edge of extinction.
Japanese and shark finning:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/feb/11/shark-fishing-in-japan
...In a report released to coincide with a meeting of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization last month, the Washington-based Pew Environment Group said at least 73 million sharks were killed every year, primarily for their fins.
...Japan caught about 65,000 tonnes of sharks just over 40 years ago, according to the country's fisheries agency; by 2009 that had almost halved to 35,000 tonnes.
"The number of sharks is definitely falling," says Kokichi Takeyama, an expert on Kesennuma's fishing industry who conducts tours of the port. "In the old days the fishermen used to throw them away as bycatch, but now they recognise their commercial value."
Japan's shark industry uses every part of the animal and so does not deserve to be targeted along with countries that catch them only for their fins, Takeyama argues.
But that does nothing to protect shark populations, says Mayumi Takeda, co-founder of PangeaSeed, a shark conservation group in Tokyo.
"Whether or not consumers use every part of the shark does not safeguard them against extinction," she says. "Just walk through the massive piles of juvenile sharks in Kesennuma and the picture becomes quite clear that this is the genocide of a species."
The people of Kesennuma, meanwhile, fear that media coverage of Japan's whaling and dolphin-hunting industries will put them under closer scrutiny. "We have seen what happened with the whaling issue, and don't want the attention," said one resident, who asked not to be named. "We just want to be left alone to get on with our jobs."
The largest companies in the world & number or employees:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers
Worlds Largest Public & Private Employers - 2013
Rank Employer Country Employees
1 China Petroleum China 1 million
2 Hon Hoi
Precision Taiwan 1.2 million
3 Indian Armed
Forces India 1.3 million
4 Indian Railways India 1.4 million
5 McDonalds United States 1.9 million
6 National Health
Service United Kingdom 1.7 million
7 Peoples Liberation
Army China 2.3 million
8 State Grid
Corporation China 1.5 million
9 US Dept. of
Defense United States 3.2 million
10 Walmart United States 2.1 million
The 10 companies with the most employees in the world - 2013
Rank Employer Country Employees
1 Walmart United States 2,200,000
2 China Petroleum
Corporation China 1,668,072
3 State Grid Corp China 1,583,000
4 Sinopec China 1,021,979
5 Hon Hoi
Precision Industry Taiwan 961,000
6 China Post Group China 889,307
7 United States
Postal Service United States 601,601
8 Volkswagon Germany 501,956
9 China
Telecommunications China 491,447
10 Aviation Industry
Corp of China China 480,147