Follow up blog post

For our Big ideas project we finished filming for the video on 3/2/16 and I put the video together including the interviews, pictures, and other videos. we had all together 4 clean up events but we are willing to clean up the campus some more voluntarily as a group because we get to socialize while we are bettering the environment. we picked up at least five bags of trash each of the days we cleaned up the campus.

Summary Blog Post

What I did: For our “Big Ideas” project we had to chose a problem in our community and do something to solve that problem and positively impact our society. Our Big ideas group chose the topic of trash clean up and recycling. Building to try and find a solution to this problem was difficult in the beginning. We wanted to influence students and teenagers to recycle and keep good habits like throwing trash into a garbage can instead of the floor. We chose to do our project at Washington high school, either during or after school. I talked to Mrs. Friedan, the environmental club teacher, about our options for our project and she gave me many good recommendations. Initially our group wanted to do our campus clean up during husky period. We wanted volunteers that would help clean up areas around campus a couple of times a week in return for service hours. This would definitely help spread awareness throughout school. We later found out, after I spoke to the principle, that we could not get service hours during school time so we had to move the campus clean up to after school. I talked to friends and shared the events on social media to get students aware of the big ideas project that we had going on. We still wanted to clean up campus a couple times a week after school for a couple hours to get good footage for our video and to pick up trash. Soon we had enough people to start cleaning up campus after school a couple of times a week. My group members and I gathered the supplies such as glove and plastic bags to make this all possible. We all contribute o the campus clean up events.

Reflection: Our project did not start out as we hoped. We struggled to find a mentor in the beginning of the project until we realized that we could have a teacher from Washington high school as our mentor. After we thought we had a good project set up by getting volunteers during husky period to clean up campus, it did not work out because of the failure to produce service hours during school hours. Our first couple of meetings after school did not go as planned either because we failed to find a time where everyone was available. But when we found a time where everyone was available it was a success, we cleaned up the trashiest parts of campus and got some good pictures and videos for our posts to spread awareness of our project. What we could have done better was come up with the idea of cleaning up campus after school earlier so that we would have more time to find volunteers willing to clean up campus after school.

Effects: Our effects we hope for this project is to spread awareness of recycling and trash clean up and to inspire people to help keep a clean environment. We want to keep our school campus clean by having everyone use trash cans for trash and recycle when necessary. Together we can save this planet, one piece of trash at a time.

January Update

so far, we have found and interviewed a credible mentor for our recycling and trash pick up big ideas project. We have decided that we will be cleaning up around campus during husky period with many other classmates who volunteer. Our next step in our project is to give our proposal to the principal of Washington high school to try and get our project approved.

For this project I have contacted and interviewed our mentor for advice. I thought up some of the ideas for our project and wrote the proposal with the help of my group member Mohammad. i will also be contacting the principal to try and get our project approved.

What concerns me about this project is the possibility that it may not be approved by the principal, so we may need to think of other options or back up ideas if we are turned down to do the project on campus. Getting approval from the principal may result in our project being a bit behind on schedule.

Big Ideas Recycling Project Proposal

Link

Mentor report

For our mentor report Mohammad Asadullah, Von Funa, Hazim Dibian, Melissa Reynante, and Ernesto pedraza interviewed Mrs. Friedan, who is the leader of the environmental club at Washington high school. She already has experience in the recycling scene. After school around 3 pm on December 9th we met with Mrs. Friedan at her classroom to talk about our big ideas project and get a little bit more information about her. We asked how their club works and what important things they do to help improve the environment. She told us,” This club is for students to come and organize their own projects, what I see them doing now is buying energy-saving light bulbs, and cleaning up certain places in the community”. We asked what would be a good idea for our recycling project. She gave us tips on how we can get started in our project and start recycling in the school campus. The most important thing as she said was making an outline for what we wanted to clean up and how often. We should rotate between different departments each week (like science or the art block) to maintain a good cleaning schedule. We were advised to write up a proposal for our project and we can have her edit and revise it to make it seem more professional.  After we complete our proposal we should take it to Mr. Moran so he can approve it if possible so that we can have an efficient trash pickup and recycling program on our campus.

Article

Rhetorical Précis

Miss Joanna Poncavage in her article "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" argues that recycling is worth it and can benefit o the community even though it may still produce waste it will preserve energy and resources for he later future. She supports her claim by giving examples and facts about reusing, recycling, and reducing specific items such as glass, metals, electronics, and plastics. Joanna Poncavage's purpose is to explain recycling, reusing and reducing in order for us to use less unnecessary resources and reduce the amount of waste piling in the landfill. She establishes an informative tone for our community.

Research 4
This article's claim is that recycling doesn't only conserve natural resources and reduce the amount of waste that has to be burned or buried, but also reduces pollution and the need for energy. It says that the U.S. has had success recycling hazardous things such as car batteries and steel items but has failed to significantly reuse other items, especially items that are a waste of packaging, such as water bottles and packaged food items. higher hygiene standards, smaller households, intense branding materials, and the increase of ready-made packaged meals are the leading factors of excess packaging. "Even simple items like bottles of water now routinely crisscross the globe, meaning that thirst for a few swallows of “product” can generate not just plastic bottles, but also a large amount of other packaging debris—from wrapping film to bin liners to shipping crates." The U.S. need to realize that some things are a waste of material and should be reused and recycled.