Our Crowdfunding Groups
Ciao! We are an undergraduate team researching the waste crisis in Rome. Our mission is to mitigate city degradation and generate sustainable solutions by investigating what inspires community action and how community-driven solutions impact the systemic crisis. But we need your help to make this happen!
Who Are We?
Our interdisciplinary team is composed of four committed undergraduate students from the Moody College of Communication, College of Natural Sciences, College of Liberal Arts, and Cockrell School of Engineering. We started this project with guidance from our three faculty mentors, Prof. Antonella Olson from the Italian Department, Dr. Kasey Faust from the Civil Engineering Department, and Dr. Junfeng Jiao from the School of Architecture. We are passionate about utilizing our diverse backgrounds to design a research initiative that analyzes the crisis through an interdisciplinary lens. The $10,000 will go directly towards getting us to Rome, research costs, and project implementation!
What’s Happening in Rome?
Rome is currently facing a waste management crisis. The problem worsened in 2013 when the European Union closed the Malagrotta, Italy’s largest landfill, without arrangements for a replacement. Since then, Rome has depended on shipping tons of its waste abroad - an expensive and environmentally unsustainable solution. Nonetheless, tons of waste sit uncollected on the streets. Multiple mayors have struggled to solve this problem, but their efforts have been largely unsuccessful. As a result, organizations like “Roma Fa Schifo” (Rome is disgusting) and Retake Roma have formed in order to urge Romans to confront complacency about growing degradation and take part in saving the Eternal City.
What Are We Doing?
Essentially we are asking, "What does it take to inspire community action?" We are researching the effectiveness of Italian non-profit Retake Roma as a grassroots solution to managing waste in Rome. We are raising money to conduct research in Rome where we can observe the crisis first-hand and explore how infrastructure enables or disables efficient waste management. As cities age and infrastructures evolve, we need research that leads to innovative and socially impactful solutions. We believe that the results of our research will be valuable to waste management organizations and cities across the world. We have partnered with various Austin organizations such as Austin Resource Recovery, and with your help, our research can impact both Roman and Austin communities.
This summer our research continues in Rome where we will work closely with Italian non-profit Retake Roma and its co-founder Dr. Rebecca Spitzmiller, a professor at Roma Tre University. Retake Roma takes action against citywide degradation by organizing neighborhood clean-up events and promoting civic responsibility. For eight weeks this summer, we are dedicated to interviewing Retake Roma members, city officials, locals and businesses, overviewing a Roman legislation course taught by Dr. Spitzmiller, facilitating workshops hosted by guest speakers and waste management experts, and lastly participating in cleanup activities in two of Retake Roma's ninety neighborhood groups, the Centro Storico and 7th Municipio. Our two faculty members, Dr. Kasey Faust and Professor Antonella Del-Fattore Olson (who has directed the Rome Study Program and has brought UT Austin students to Rome for more than 20 years) provide both oversight and mentorship to our student team and project implementation in Rome.
In Fall 2020, we will continue to participate in communication campaigns and volunteer at events such as Austin City Limits Festival and Pecan St. Festival, where we have already started to identify opportunities to implement our research. We will synthesize our findings onto a research paper and poster that we will present to our Austin partners, ultimately creating a two-way conduit of information sharing between both cities.
Why We Need You
We only have one month to raise funds for our project, every donation of any size will help, and all donations made on this site are tax-deductible! Whether you choose to donate to our HornRaiser, spread the word on social media, and/or become an ambassador for our project, you are helping us complete this research. We are each committing the $1,000 scholarships we each received as finalists from competing in the President's Award for Global Learning, but we need to raise an additional $10,000 to execute our project. Please consider making an investment in this research for us and our planet!
Grazie!
Lastly, we would like to thank you for taking the time to learn more about our Rome Waste Management: An Ancient City Facing Crisis research project! We deeply care about this project and genuinely appreciate all donations and shares. We are excited to FINALLY turn this project into a reality with YOUR HELP!
Follow Our Journey
Along with this HornRaiser campaign, we also have a Facebook page and Instagram. We will be updating you every step of the way until our project is complete! Follow us on our socials and at #RomeMeetsAustin to receive project updates throughout the year.
In 2016, a short video clip of boys laughing in a Roman suburb went viral. The boys’ game consisted of counting rats as they scurried out of a dumpster overflowing with trash, the children surrounded by dirty paper plates, plastic bags, broken bottles, and rotting food. They counted a total of 25 rats in five minutes. This is just one of many personal accounts of the systemic trash crisis that has plagued Rome for decades.
Our international partner, Retake Roma, is active in 90 cities throughout Italy. This organization brings citizens together to fight against degradation in their neighborhoods and cities.
Our project currently has 13 local and international partners ready to help us tackle the waste crisis.
Rome struggles to sustain itself as a livable city while simultaneously supporting the 2,000,000 tourists who visit each year.
Rome ships over 1.2 million tons of their waste abroad annually. This is an expensive and unsustainable method of disposing of their waste.
