Fuente Nueva waste project: Difference between revisions

This is a research project in partnership between Engr308 Technology and the Environment and the Fuente Nueva charter school, during Fall 2013. The project includes analyzing the waste profile and impacts of trash from the Fuente Nueva campus in Arcata, Humboldt County, California, as well as devising an implementable plan to ameliorate the impacts.

Teams

Physical Infrastructure Lab 1

Team: Michael Wold, Annika Ragsdale, Jeff Wastell,Gladys Arechiga, sarah cruz

Objective: State the objective of your part of the project, e.g. The objective is to design a feasible plan for site infrastructure that reduces waste and waste impacts. The plan will include bins, bin placement, waste flows, and actual signage.

Physical Infrastructure Lab 2

Team: Christian Nielsen, Dylan Hills, Brittney Goldie

Objective: State the objective of your part of the project, e.g. The objective is to design a feasible plan for site infrastructure that reduces waste and waste impacts. The plan will include bins, bin placement, waste flows, and actual signage.

Education Lab 1

Team: Athena Vescott Annette Penny

Objective: State the objective of your part of the project, e.g. The objective is to design a feasible plan for site infrastructure that reduces waste and waste impacts. The plan will include bins, bin placement, waste flows, and actual signage. Make sure to include something about working with children, video for children and adults, and lesson plans.

Education Lab 2

Team: Jina Ayres, Beau Hopkins, Giusseppe Raymundo

Objective: The objective of our group is to research and implement an educational plan for zero waste at Fuente Nueva. We plan to develop lesson plans on waste reduction, recycling, and composting. We plan to work with the children of Fuente Nueva directly, interacting and teaching them about waste. We also plan to develop educational videos for the children and adults, as well as a video that documents the Fall '13 Engr 308 class working on the Fuente Nueva Waste Project.

Plan Lab 1

Team: Everett Williams

Objective: State the objective of your part of the project, e.g. The objective is to design a feasible plan for site infrastructure that reduces waste and waste impacts. The plan will include bins, bin placement, waste flows, and actual signage. Make sure to include something about working with children, video for children and adults, and lesson plans. Make sure to include something about the entire phased site plan, methodology, client presentation and grant language.

Plan Lab 2

Team: Nathan Fisch

Objective: State the objective of your part of the project, e.g. The objective is to design a feasible plan for site infrastructure that reduces waste and waste impacts. The plan will include bins, bin placement, waste flows, and actual signage. Make sure to include something about working with children, video for children and adults, and lesson plans. Make sure to include something about the entire phased site plan, methodology, client presentation and grant language.

Meta

Team: Drew Harrington, Nick Hurn, Anthony Gordon, Bri Bachtell, and Casildo Perez.

Objective: The objective of this team is to; aid in project management, organize information on the wiki, create an excel layout for data entry and polish final information in spreadsheets generated by the other teams in order to have a final product that is effective, presentable, and accessible.

Research

Use wiki markup for references, which is the following format:

• Information. <ref>URL or Title of reference. </ref>

See Help:Footnotes for more.

Every team needs to research the embedded energy, CO2, mass and volume of typical waste materials from a grade school, e.g. those little milk cartons.

Physical Infrastructure Research

You will want research relating to: existing physical infrastructure such as bins and signage at schools in general; best waste practices in K-6 (or K-8) schools; costs and styles of waste bins that could be used; etc. Please come up with more topics and add your research here with the format listed above (under (#Research). Let The Games Begin

Annika Ragsdale’s research topics:

Research topic #1: Creating effective signage Peer-reviewed journal article: Tracey, M. D. (2005, October). Crafting persuasive pro-environmental messages. Monitor on Psychology, 36(9). http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct05/persuasive.aspx

Summary: Focusing on social norms is the most effective way to see results from posted sign such as, saying “join your classmates in recycling!” Focusing on the "do's" instead of "don'ts" is more effective to see results. Using phrases like "do this for the environment" or "do this to save resources" is one of the least effective ways to make a sign work.

Research topic #2: Why is recycling important?

Brown, L. (2009). Plan B 4.0. Stabilizing Climate: An Energy Efficiency Revolution (pp. 97-108). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Summary: Why recycling is important: “Beyond reducing materials use, the energy savings from recy-cling are huge. Steel made from recycled scrap takes only 26 per-cent as much energy as that from iron ore. For aluminum, the figure is just 4 percent. Recycled plastic uses only 20 percent as much energy. Recycled paper uses 64 percent as much—and with far fewer chemicals during processing.” In the United States, 29% of garbage is recycled, if we could raise this percentage, we would be able to conserve our resources further and save much more energy.

(Also, here's some case studies of effective school recycling programs:) http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/lgcentral/Library/Innovations/Procurement/Schools/Casestudies.htm

Christian Nielsen’s Research Topics:

Research Topic #3: Reuse is just as important as recycle Peer-reviewed Journal Article: John Tierney (June 30, 1996) New York Times: “Rinsing out tuna cans and tying up newspapers may make you feel virtuous, but recycling could be America’s most wasteful activity.” www.web.williams.edu/HistSci/curriculum/101/garbage.html

Summary: Looking at value and adding resourcefulness and creativity is what is needed in our future. Why because we are by nature wasteful beings, but that doesn't have to reflect how we always will be. Reusing is just as important as recycling. Changing the culture of waste is not something that will go smoothly or soundly but if we start at the smallest roots, meaning our children. Then our future looks a whole lot brighter than before. Reusing newspapers as coloring sheets and decorations or wrapping paper was ideas that grew from this article. Looking at the value of the material and adding creativity is what will spark a change. Its all about being resourceful and efficient at the same time.^[1]

Research Topic #4:Incorporating everyone positively together to recycle will strengthen the system Peters, Kim (1998) Community-Based Waste Management for Environmental Management and Income Generation in Low-Income Areas: A Case Study of Nairobi, Kenya. In association with Mazingira Institute Nairobi, Kenya March 1998. Published by City Farmer, Canada’s office of Urban Agriculture

Summary:

A positive and committed community atmosphere centered around the recycling system is needed for it to achieve full potential: If there is a positive reinforcement to commitment of recycling than it is more likely to occur. In Nairobi, Kenya being involved in the community recycling system means more opportunities and a chance at a better more comfortable life. These are values that should be preached to the children through our bins and signage. These signs must positively reinforce the need and commitment to recycle.

Allowing everyone to get involved makes it second nature that it occurs, like a routine.; Creating a recycling club or a recycling system that is centralized with the school. Appropriate positive energy levels and traffic patterns incorporated will make it easy for the children to develop muscle memory when conducting the tasks of recycling and reusing when using the bins and reading the signage Allowing everyone to get involved will help form a sense of belonging. Since we are not educational but infrastructure I took this as what if every child was able to help decorate and build the system. This could spawns a sense of pride in recycling and its pride in the accomplishment of building the system.

Reusing of organic materials is just as important as recycling inorganic products: A composting system that is easy to access is something that could greatly impact the success of the recycling. It allows the children to step outside the norm of recycling bottles and newspapers and lets the children see recycling grow and mold over into something very useful and helpful. Seeing a compost system incorporated into this project should be a high priority of ours. We could incorporate it into the cafeteria recycling signs ^[2]

Research Topic #5: Signage must be simple, noticeable, and effective.

Interview: Brittany Peishel, Humboldt State University Child Development Major.

Summary:When asked about what is the most effective way to get these images across to third, fourth, and fifth graders; Brittany responded with an easy answer, Simple but flashy. She said that at that age most children are aware of what signs are around them as in advertising, rule and regulations, technology. She suggested that we look into what captures their eyes like sports, art, cartoons, exc. and use that to help design the signs that will help direct the children to the bins. She also said the less words the better, citing that children want the fast and easy thing not the stand their and absorb it product.

Education Research

You will want research relating to: existing waste curriculum for schools; existing waste education videos for school; information on how K-5 students learn; etc. Please come up with more topics and add your research here with the format listed above (under (#Research).

Beau Hopkins Interview with children about waste & recycling:

Q: What do you know about recycling?

A1: I don’t know anything about it.

A2: I know that when you recycle something, it can be used again in another item but different from what it originally was.

Q: Where do you think waste goes after you throw it out?

A1: It goes to the dump but I don’t know about places like that.

A2: I think waste used to go to the ocean, but now since we have garbage trucks it now goes to the dump and somebody goes through it and the useless stuff gets burned up.

Beau Hopkins Peer Review Article: The Social Context of Recycling

"The most important determinant of recycling behavior is access to a structured, institutionalized program that makes recycling easy and convenient" (The Social Context of Recycling) ^[3]

Beau Hopkins Book: Recycling, for the future: it's everybody's business

“Bellevue, WA enjoyed one of the highest single family recycling rates at 61% in 1997, and perhaps the highest multi-family recycling rate as well. In 1998, multi-family housing residents recycled 21.7 pounds of recyclables per month per household. Bellevue’s Neighbors for Recycling volunteer program trains residents to educate the community about recycling. More than 500 residents have participated in Bellevue’s personalized outreach activities and today, 97% of multi-family buildings in Bellevue participate in recycling.” (Recycling, for the future: it's everybody's business) ^[4]

Athena Vescott Peer Review Article: Launching Zero Waste Schools:
Several elementary schools in Illinois initiated zero waste programs making students leaders to educate and take charge of the waste at the school. "Students selected as Waste Ambassadors have designed posters to educate other students, teachers, parents and visitors about their zero waste efforts. The learning process for the 4th grade Holmes Waste Ambassadors has included field trips to the Educycle Recycling Center (a materials recovery facility); Chicago's Green City Farmers' Market to learn about the role of composting on farms; a local landfill; Whole Foods to learn about packaging through a scavenger hunt; and the Working Bikes Cooperative to understand reuse strategies. " ^[5]
Book:EPA A Resource Guide of Solid Waste Educational Materials
The EPA put together a collection of resources containing information on a "variety of solid waste topics such as source reduction, recycling, reuse, household hazardous waste, and composting." They suggest BIll Nye the Science Guy: Garbage where "the participants explain how all living things produce waste, but that the amount and the type of waste that humans produce pose a threat to other organisms. Nye distinguishes between biodegradable and nonbiodegradable waste and advises viewers on how to reduce, reuse, and recycle before filling more landfill space" ^[6]

Jina Ayres
Peer Review Article: Implementation of a Zero Waste Program

"Education, including formal education, public awareness and training should be recognized as a process by which human beings and societies can reach their fullest potential. Education is critical for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of the people to address environment and development issues. Therefore, educating institutions must play a key role in setting quality standards in education for sustainable development." ^[7]

Book:What Works: A Guide to Environmental Education and Communication Projects for Practitioners and Donors.

Electronic media can serve as a useful tool in catalyzing involvement in environmental issues. "Due to the overwhemling importance of television in much of the world, video products are extremely effective information tools." ^[8]

Annette Penny Book:Let's Reduce and Recycle: Curriculum for Solid Waste Awareness

Curricula addressing many issues about waste, including "What is waste, how do we manage waste, how does waste affect our resources, how we can produce less waste, and what we can do about the waste we prodouce" can prove to be effective in creating a generation of environmentally conscious citizens. Americans produce more trash than any other country in the world, and introducing the "Garbage Gremlin" to kids at an early age with a solid waste curriculum helps them to realize that each of use shares responsibility for 'protecting and maintaining our planet, and that each of us can make a different through being aware of our lifestyle choices and behaviors.' The US produces 180 million tons of municipal solid waste per year and is growing. This is enough to fill a convoy of garbage trucks half way to the moon! ^[9]

Plan Research

You will want research relating to: creating a waste plan; waste auditing; existing grants for waste or waste in grade schools (or maybe even environmental education in grade schools); etc. Please come up with more topics and add your research here with the format listed above (under (#Research).

What is in the waste?

On average 25% of lunch food is wasted ^[10]

Waste Education

Australian Waste Wise Schools Program is successful waste education program that has been ongoing since 1996. The program is cited to have been success because of the following factors ^[11] • The school administration are committed and supportive • The community is involved in the planning and implementation • Students are encouraged to take ownership of the project • The program is planned in committees or teams with audits, policies, targets, action plans and curriculum plans • Dynamic curriculum that changes with the current conditions • Good systems that are well maintained • the school community strives for change but understand change takes time • The project is continuously improving • At least some of the projects are enjoyable and there are times for celebration

Meta Research

• See Plastic bag programs for an example of a list created by Engr308 in the past and Arcata plastic bags#Literature Review Synthesis for an example of a final research list.

References