Here’s an idea: someone on a bicycle comes to your place, picks up your laundry, does it for you – including folding – and returns it, also by bicycle. Clean and green. This exists and it’s called Wash Cycle Laundry. If you think this is a good idea, then you are not alone. Echoing Green, an angel investor in socially conscious entrepreneurial businesses, has named Wash Cycle a semifinalist for one of its 2011 Echoing Green Fellowships.
Now to be honest there are a lot of semifinalists – 224 to be exact. But that is out of 2,854 applicants. About 15 of those semifinalists will be awarded fellowships, which include start-up money to pay for health insurance, a stipend and access to legal and financial help.
Gabriel Mandujano, the former executive director of the Enterprise Center Community Development Corporation in Walnut Hill, started Wash Cycle Laundry earlier this year. The company does pick-ups and deliveries in West Philadelphia and Center City. You may have seen their bike trailers loaded with large blue tubs.
Just a reminder as trees start to pile up curbside. If you want to recycle your tree, a couple of options are available. See our previous story here for more details.
The death of an infant from starvation and dehydration at a West Philadelphia family shelter has been ruled a homicide. Police say the boy, 2-month-old Quasir Alexander, was found by medical personnel at the Traveler’s Aid Family Services shelter at 111 N. 49th St. and later pronounced dead at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the boy had been living at the 75-room shelter, which is well stocked with food, with his mother and siblings.
Traveler’s Aid Family Services started as an organization focused on helping immigrant families in the early 1900s. It has evolved to help homeless families and stranded travelers, according to its website. Families typically stay at the shelter an average of five months.
Monday’s snow drew some observations by Holly Otterbein in City Paper about the changes at Clark Park. The story quickly lays out the two sides of the argument: “improvements” versus “clear cut.” Here’s the meat of the story:
“Indeed, the renovations — though aimed at providing better drainage, improved paths and more lighting — are the subject of no small controversy. The Clark Park revitalization, which has been in the works for the last 10 years, has drawn criticism from various locals, including eco-artist Aaron Birk, who wrote this September in an e-mail to City Paper and others, “Clark Park is going to be clear-cut in the next day or so. There is now a chain-link construction fence preventing anyone from setting foot in the park,” adding, “Let me know if you’re interested in helping organize an emerge ncy sit-in. I have a 50-watt megaphone.”
But according to the Friends of Clark Park, only 24 trees have been removed and that’s because they’re old, diseased or invasive.
“These trees were selected for removal after consultation with arborists from the Morris Arboretum,” says xBrian Siano, vice president of the Friends. “And preserving the tree canopy was one of the most important goals we had.”
Below is a copy of the (now 10-year-old) master plan for Clark Park. The folks at The Friends of Clark Park have said that they expect the “A” park to be open by this spring. Clark Park Master Plan
The City has announced that trash and recycling collection has been suspended for today. Residents with regular Monday trash and recycling collection should hold their trash until next week for regular pickup on Monday, Jan. 3. On Tuesday through Friday, residents with rear driveway collection should place their trash and recycling in front of their homes for pickup. Rear trash collection will resume next week.
In a recent piece in Philadelphia Magazine, the new Drexel president John Fry lays out his hopes for the remaking of the neighborhoods near the campus – the Eds and Meds (universities and medicine/science) approach a la Penn. Fry imagines a Drexel that is the most “civically engaged university in America.” The plan seems to be similar to what has taken place at Penn, where Fry was a vice president under former president Judith Rodin. The plan includes more police, help with faculty and staff mortgages and improved schools.
From the piece:
The short-term goal is to make the northern University City neighborhoods around Drexel more like the clean, leafy, surprisingly safe and prosperous precincts that adjoin the Penn campus, whose very niceness Fry had more than a little to do with creating during a seven-year stint as Penn’s executive vice president under then-president Judith Rodin.
The piece is also sprinkled with contrasts between Fry and the neighborhoods he proposes to revamp – references to his Land Rover, his degrees and the fact that he lives in Bryn Mawr.
Here’s an idea: someone on a bicycle comes to your place, picks up your laundry, does it for you – including folding – and returns it, also by bicycle. Clean and green. This exists and it’s called Wash Cycle Laundry. If you think this is a good idea, then you are not alone. Echoing Green, an angel investor in socially conscious entrepreneurial businesses, has named Wash Cycle a semifinalist for one of its 2011 Echoing Green Fellowships.
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