Jeff Wilson, an environmental science professor in Austin, Texas, plans to spend the next year living in a dumpster. The Dumpster Project is all a part of Wilson’s new course on low-impact living and the Huston Tillotson University’s new green campus initiative, reports Wilson will begin his year in the six-foot-wide dumpster later this fall.
The dumpster, roughly one percent the size of an average new American home, will be outfitted with pioneering systems and be totally self-reliant. The unit will use solar panels for power and innovative systems for things like water filtration, climate control, and energy-producing toilets.Wilson’s students will track and study the modified dumpster throughout the year.
The project has loftier goals than “just a one-guy-in-a-dumpster deal,” Wilson told . Eventually, Wilson’s goal is to tour the project across the country and share his K-12 curriculum using the dumpster as a model.
Professor Dumpster, Wilson’s unofficial title, said“My ex-wife did not express a lot of encouragement in our [6-year-old] daughter sleeping with daddy in a dumpster … So that’s not gonna happen.”