Eradajere Oleita thinks she may have a partial solution to two of our country’s problems: garbage and poverty. It’s called the Chip Bag Project. The 26-year-old student and environmentalist from Detroit is asking a favor of local snack lovers: Rather than throw your empty chip bags into trash (垃圾桶), donate them so she can turn them into sleeping bags for the homeless.

Chip eaters drop off their empty bags from Doritos, Lay’s, and other favorites at two locations in Detroit: a print shop and a clothing store, where Oleita and her volunteer helpers collect them. After they clean the chip bags in soapy hot water, they cut them open, lay them flat, and iron them together.

It takes about four hours to sew a sleeping bag, and each takes around 150 to 300 chip bags, depending on whether they’re single-serve or family size. The result is a sleeping bag that is “waterproof, lightweight, and easy to carry around,” Oleita told the Detroit News.

Since its start in 2020, the Chip Bag Project has collected more than 800,000 chip bags and, till last December, created 110 sleeping bags.

Sure, it would be simpler to raise the money to buy new sleeping bags. But that’s only half the goal for Oleita—whose family moved to the United States from Nigeria a decade ago with the hope of attaining a better life—and her fellow volunteers. “We are devoted to making an impact not only socially, but environmentally,” she says.

Eradajere Oleita’s practice is a powerful reminder that environmental injustice and poverty often go hand in hand. As Oleita told hourdetroit.com, “I think it’s time to show connections between all of these issues.”

In the past, most people received their news from newspapers, magazines, radio and TV. But now, almost anyone can report and publish on the Internet and share it as news through social media. But the problem is that not all of the information is true and not all of the reporting is trustworthy.

Howard Schneider, a former editor of the newspapers Newsday, started the Center for News Literacy (素养) at Stony Book University in 2007. The center has multiple projects, but the most famous one is a course to teach news literacy. The course trains students to look for various details that may indicate the truth of the story.

Michelle Sheng is a third-year student at the University of Michigan. Sheng finds that students either just stop reading the news or only take news from one source that they trust. "A lot of people are tired of the news. People are too busy to keep up with the news, and it is really easy to take whatever news is given to you because you don’t have the time to figure it out yourself,“ she says.

For her part, Sheng recently created a digital exhibit for the university library of images to educate students on steps they can take to better analyze the news.

It is important to educate an even larger audience, beyond American university students. The Center for News Literacy has developed teaching resources, as well as a free online news literacy course. It is also trying to reach a younger audience. It has partnered with several secondary schools in the American state of New York to teach news literacy.       

People should research and confirm what they read online. However, to change human behavior is a difficult thing, but that really is the only thing that is going to help. The biggest problem is not getting people to be able to recognize bad journalism or false news, but getting people to want to recognize it. Our brains are wired to the Internet to seek out information that agrees with our current beliefs.

13-year-old Abraham Olagbegi was born with a rare blood disease in Jackson, Mississippi and needed a bonemarrow transplant（骨髓移植）. His transplant was successful, and he qualified for Make-A-Wish, an organization that realizes wishes for children with serious illnesses. Abraham decided he wanted a long lasting wish.

“I remember we were coming home from one of his doctor appointments and he said, ‘Mom, I thought about it, and I really want to feed the homeless’.” Abraham’s mom Miriam Olagbegl, said. So, that’s what he did.

In September, Make-A-Wish helped Abraham organize a day to hand out free food in Jackson, Mississippi. “When the homeless people get the plate, some of them would come back and sing to us and thank us,” he said. “And it just really feels good, it warms our hearts. And my parents always taught us that it’s a blessing to be a blessing”.

But Abraham’s wish is still not realized. Make-A-Wish will help Abraham feed the homeless once a month for one year. After Make-A-Wish finishes his wish in August 2022, Abraham plans to continue helping the homeless. He wants to turn this into a nonprofit（非营利组织）—one he’s already named “Abraham’s Table.”