Thank you professor Verges

I am very happy that professor Verges included in this class Garbage Land. It definitely made the class even more interesting. Personally, I learned a lot. I changed the way I was recycling and even the way I was buying! To change a way of thinking about something is something that a very few classes can achieve. I want to thank professor Verges for everything she taught us. She can be sure that we all learned a lot from her and changed a lot of bad habits that we had. Finally, I want to say that the involvement with the community was also great! Since I am from a different country and have been here for less than a year, I didn’t have the opportunity to do it without this class. Thank you very much professor Verges for everything you did for us during this semester! I hope we all keep in touch with this blog!

The story... :)

Thanks, Michelle! So the story is, my condominium complex doesn't offer recycling services, but we do have a big dumpster to put our trash in. I started recycling earlier in the semester, and convinced the guys who live in the unit below me (also college students) to do it, too. We have to pack up our cars and drive it down the road to a recycling center every once in a while. Well, we'd collected a formidable collection of recyclables, which we were beginning to feel pretty proud of. As I told Michelle, last weekend there were some people renting the condo next door to mine, who were in town for the Notre Dame spring Blue/Gold football game. On Sunday morning I went outside to go for a run, and the renters were packing up and leaving, and the man said, "Excuse me, miss, I just wanted to tell you that we threw your trash away for you. You know, those boxes that were sitting there..." I couldn't believe it! What a moron! I did go get my makeshift recycling bin, full of stereotypical college-age recyclables, out of the dumpster, as they stood there and watched in disbelief.

I also found it quite interesting that they raided the boys' recycling bins as well. Amazingly enough, however, as the other pictures show, they seemed to realize that the newspapers were recyclable, so they left those, but they BAGGED and THREW AWAY all their other stuff (We got that out of the dumpster, too.) But can you believe it?! People we didn't even know! Renters for the weekend! I find it ironic that they clearly care enough about "garbage" to know that it looks distasteful, and want to keep the environment clean. And they didn't like the look of our trash out on our porches, to the point that they took it upon themselves to dispose of it. Yet when it comes to their recycling knowledge, out of all of our stuff, the only thing that they visually recognized as recyling was newspaper...even though all the rest of the stuff was tossed in the same boxes as the newspaper (quite disgusting too, i might add). So they went through it, stole all of our recycles, and threw them in the dumpster. Amazing. Anyway, proves my personal take-home message from Royte's book--the public NEEDS to be better educated. If they were, obviously the motivation is there to keep the environment clean...they just need to be better informed of their options.

p.s. that exam was soo hard!! eek! have a great summer, everyone!

Molly's Recyclables

molly3
Originally uploaded by mverges.

I love this photo because not only does it show Molly's commitment to recycle, it beautifully reveals the diet of a college student! :0)

Molly sent me a couple more photos to share with you (just click on this flickr photo).

And she has a great story to tell you about her recyclables; I'll let her tell you the story!

The Most Wicked of All Resins...

After reading the chapter in Royte's book about plastic recycling, along with Jennifer's reply to my "yogurt lid" post, I begin to wonder what types of plastic were being used to manufacture the majority of the plastic products I used in my house. Mainly, I wanted to know more about what sorts of items were made out of the various types of plastic (#'s 1-7) and I also wanted to see if any of the manufacturers had any misleading labels on their un-recyclable products. So thus I kept an eye out for various plastics around my house and workplace for a few weeks in order to see what I could find out. Here's a list of the various sorts of information I collected:
1- Here I found pretty much any botttled water, juice, or soda (water: sam's choice, dasani, kroger, enon springs, ice mountain, aquafina, nestle pure life, fiji, Juice/tea: minute maid, lipton iced tea, Soda: sunkist, sprite, fanta, coke, sierra mist, gatorade, pepsi) and also any sort of common household cleaners (orange glo, windex, lysol) and a few other various food containers (heinz ketchup)
2- kroger grocery sacks, milk jugs, kroger yogurt smoothie, any anti-bac hand wipes container, cacique-drink up- Yonique yogurt, baby powder, 7-11 slurpee cup, the actual recycling bins and most trash cans themselves, lotion, coffee creamers, shampoo and conditioner bottles
3- I couldn't find any!
4- elmer's glue bottle
5- subway cup, food storage containers, ziploc microwave bowls, rubbermaid
6- dannon activia yogurt, client's medicine cups, 7-11 super big gulp cup, some trash cans, styrafoam cups, wendy's cup, plastic utensils,
7- "white out" correction tape, welch's orange pineapple juice bottle

I found absolutely nothing at all on many various wrappers, most of them were the snack sized food portions (any bread, candy in general, cheeses, granola bars, little debbie/hostess )

Then, after reading some of the non-conventional messages on various packages, I began to wonder what other sorts of interesting labels I would encounter on products outside the realms of plastic. The messages varied quite a bit from some that were very environmentally friendly, to some that were not so friendly. Here is a list of some of my more intriguiging "finds" on the "non-plastic" packages:
◦ Glade air freshener spray: "you can recycle this steel container in an increasing number of communities. Call 800-558-5252 for recycling information. It also had "contains no CFCs which deplete the ozone layer"
◦ Air Wick: "contains no CFCs which deplete the ozone layer" and "please recycle when empty"
◦ Pringles: "canister contains at least 50% recycled material, 15% post-consumer content. For more info call 1-800-568-4035"
◦ Eclipse gum: read "do your part" next to a little symbol of a stick figure throwing away trash into a canister
◦ Sam's choice root beer can "recyclable aluminum container if facilities exist in your area
◦ Kroger mac and cheese box: "carton made from 100% recycled paperboard, minimum 35% post-consumer content"
◦ Papa john's pizza box: "corrugated recycles"
◦ Comet: "package contains at least 75% recycled material(minimum 50% post-consumer), the surfactants in this product are biodegradable, contains no phosphate"

Lastly, I just wanted to list this website:
http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/InformationSheets/Plastics.htm

It is a concise, informative (and visually-pleasing) website mainly about recycling plastic. I liked it a lot because it isn't overwhelming with too much information and gets to the point quickly.

Yet another amazing Amanda Serenevy experience...

For part of my service-learning credit, I was given the opportunity to try out some of Amanda Serenevy's amazing math challenges with the children I nanny for. Basically it was a wonderful/fun activity to teach addition and subtraction. I babysit for an 8-year old boy, a 5-year old girl, and a 2-year old boy, and all three have been diagnosed with pediatric bipolar disorder. While these are without question the brightest, most creative, and most intriguing kids I have ever worked with, homework and schoolwork is always a serious issue for the older two. The youngest is slightly developmentally delayed, so going into Amanda's activity, I knew he wasn't ready to grasp the concept, but there was no doubt that he would want to participate with his brother and sister.

Per Amanda's direction, I was to tape several sheets of paper to the floor, each one with a number on it. Then I taped them to the floor in the proper, number line order. Then I would tell the kids to start on 0, and say, for example, "2"-which would prompt them to go stand on the number 2, and continue, "+4=", and the kids would walk 4 spaces forward, and look at the number on the sheet they were standing on, and yell out the answer. I then introduced subtraction and also incorporated negative numbers, which even the 8-year old hadn't confronted in school yet. I was nervous to see how they'd do, based on our usual experience with academically-based material, and the attention it demands. But the kids absolutely loved this!! We did it for about 35 minutes. And for each correct answer they got, I gave them an M&M. So the activity itself was intrinsically reinforcing, and they loved being able to move around, and the M&M's provided an added form of motivation. They started building mazes with the numbers, and both the 5-year old and the 8-year old gained proficiency in addition, subtraction, AND negative numbers!! It was so amazing! While the 2-year old didn't understand the concept, he stayed active the entire time, and jumped around on the numbers, and loved the treats, too!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Amanda! It was so fantastic to see kids who typically struggle so much genuinely love an academically-based activity as much as they did this. If you babysit, you should totally try this!!

Tutoring...

Yesterday I volunteered at the library to help tutor some young ones. I wanted to share my experience with you. Perhaps this will help motivate some of you to keep being involved. I know it did me!

A young boy comes to mind when I think about yesterday's tutoring. He was in seventh grade trying his hardest to understand algebra. He was working on the not so fun problems where you have to solve for x. At first I had to really think back on how to deal with these type of problems. I'm embarassed to say I had forgotten. There were also FRACTIONS in these problems that had completely scared me. However, I figured we would both suffer together because I truly wanted him to go home at the end of the day feeling confident about these problems. So, I started to read a little of his book and I looked at some practice problems and all of a sudden it came to me. I knew how to do these!!!

Now it was a matter of me being able to explain the steps and teach it in a way that would "connect" with him. By golly, this kid was as quick as a whip. He caught on so very fast to what I was saying. He made occasional mistakes and I would correct him. At the end of the tutoring he asked Amanda to give him any problem to solve. I was thinking, "Oh dear, Any?" I was hoping Amanda would be easy on him but she gave him a challenging question and he solved it with no problem. I was so proud of him and I could tell that she was also.

I was so encouraged by this. There are so many young children out there that are struggling with math and their parents aren't capable of helping because they might not have had much education. If we all give just a little bit of our time, it will touch many lives. I encourage my classmates to continue to reach out to others. The reward is priceless...

Was it worth it?!?!

One of Royte's lines in our recent reading that struck me was: “It isn’t worth it, they said, to get worked up over paper versus plastic at the grocery store.” After this statement I responded pretty defensively, because I thought, wait we just had a whole BagFest over plastic bags and now they, the UCS, say it is not worth it to think about these “unimportant decisions.”

It raised a lot of questions for me, as far as the value, impact, and role of our BagFest. At this point I began to smile, I thought of the 25+ people that I spoke to while counting their bags. I thought of our impact, or footprint, that we made that day. I thought of all the things we learned and had fun with in class. And I think one of the best things was the relationships I built throughout this whole project. It was not about collecting 72,571 bags (that was awesome, though), but it was about the statement, the opportunity, the awareness, and the knowledge that came from BagFest.

Without BagFest in our community, who would have thought that in one day we could collect what Wal-Mart gathers in a month? If BagFest never would have happened, who would have believed that there is an importance in what we do as a community with plastic bags? Sure we all might only have 50 bags, but put them together and look at what our community has created. We recycled those bags that would normally either be thrown away or stuffed away. The community I think gained a lot of knowledge from this opportunity. It was not about collecting the bags, but rather taking the time to expand our knowledge of resources that are just waiting for the community. It was amazing and encouraging to see so many young children involved in this event. Also it was surprising how many people from all around the community cared.

Overall, I saw this event as bringing awareness to the community of the difference we can make when we all pull together, and what an impact that makes! I grew a lot through this experience. I found myself leading, teaching, and talking with people I never thought I would have an opportunity to. The relationships I built with my classmates were encouraging, motivating, and unique, because we were all going through an experience together. I do not think I have ever been involved in any other school activity that I felt so proud of and so self-rewarded by. So, is it worth it to get worked up over paper or plastic (or cloth)? I would say most definitely!

The Blog ( Personal Reflection)

When we were given this assignment for the first time, I felt sick in my stomach. The idea of writing my views did not sit very well in my mind. This was horifying for me to share what I was thinking about and give my personal opinions was not my ideal way of studying Statistics. To me numbers, large formulas, and extra computation that no any other class wanted to do them was going to be dumped on us. That was the ideal way of studying Stat. The blog slowly became more fun and informative and suprising enough to me, it became one of the things Iwould look forward to look and write something in it.There was a lot of good ideas that were shared in the blog that before this assignment, I would not find it possible that the blog could provide. There is something empowering about sharing my own ideas that I have just discovered in this class. By no means I do mean that I had the best views, however, I mean that it is a good feeling to share thoughts and ideas. I GENERALLY ENJOYED THIS BLOG !!!! THANKS AND GOD BLESS.

Goodbye Plastic Bottle, Hello SIGG

As part of the requirements for my college degree, I had to enroll in a course on health & fitness. I was shocked to learn that adults should drink 3 liters of water daily. That's basically a gallon of water every day. My jaw dropped in astonishment.

Oh my Lord, I thought. If I drink 3L of water everyday, I'm going to spend most of my day in the bathroom. Good grief.

But, I reasoned, this is good for my health. So I decided to drink more water, that is, 3L of water each day. And yes, I spent more quality time in the bathroom! But my body adapted to this change, and now, it's a daily habit. My body actually feels deprived whenever I don't drink my usual 3L of water.

Anyway, my jaw recently dropped on another occassion. This time, it was at BagFest. I was gleefully following along to Elizabeth Royte's talk, when suddenly she raised a plastic bottle to make a point about the dangers of plastics. Now, this was no ordinary plastic bottle: It was MY plastic bottle she was publicly condemning! Oh, for the love...how I embrace public shame is beyond me. I think I actually cowered when I saw that bottle raised in contempt.

But point well taken. As I recently learned, disposing plastic bottles is a dirty business. Toxins and dioxins are released when incinerated, so torching them is out of the question. In landfills, plastics can last for thousands of years, leaching toxins as they disintegrate. (Ok, that's not a good solution.) And recycling plastics creates poorer-quality plastics. (Great, we're three for three here. Folks, that's a strike-out!)

As Tony asked, "What on Earth are we to do?"

For me, the answer was simple: Stop using plastic bottles. So now I'm the happy owner of this SIGG bottle. It's a 1L bottle made from aluminum, which I purchased from www.reusablebags.com. I also got a 1/2 L SIGG bottle for easy travel.

So, goodbye plastic water bottle. Hello SIGG! :0)

Water Issues

First off, I would like to admit that I have been a little negligent about actually checking the blog, but boy, look what I was missing! I am a bit of a novice when it comes to blogging (case in point: this is really my first, err, second time), so I hope that you all will forgive me. After perusing the various postings I was astounded by the revealings of my peers, and I have come to the realization that this particular blog is quite resourceful; when it comes to environmental issues, consider me sold.

Recently, I had the opportunity to submit a research paper regarding the issue of water diversions out of the Great Lakes basin. It seems that as denizens of this region, not many people (myself included), were really inlcined to know much about the Lakes, so I decided to do a little bit of investigating. After reviewing some scientific literature, the inferences that I was able to procure were quite alarming. In lieu of trying to summarize all of my findings, I would definitely encourage you to do a little bit of surfing around. A great website for learning more about diversions and the immense capabilites that the Great Lakes system provides is available at the following:

http://www.glwi.uwm.edu/ourwaters/

The information was compiled by the Great Lakes Water Institute and I found it to be very insightful.

To tie this all back to Royte and sustainability, one very interesting fact that I was able to glean from my research deals with bottled water. Due to the seemingly vast amount of fresh water right next door and looming concerns over the issues related to water scarcity, some proponents of diversions see it as an opportunity to exploit the water and sell it as a commodity; even ship it overseas. Fortunately, there is some legislation to protect this from happening, but loop-holes do indeed exist.

According to some information from the GLWI website, "The 2005 Annex Implementing Agreements regulate new diversions and exports of water out of the basin in pipelines, canals, and containers larger than 5.7 gallons." Current legislation does not, however, contain a mandate on shipping water out of the basin in smaller containers, and the implications of such could be disastrous for our region. What we're talking about is the complete loss of habitat as the lake levels decline. This could ,in turn, play host to a number of malignant scenarios, any of which we would not wish to come to fruition.

To make matters worse, the U.S. alone has witnessed a marked rise in the consumption of bottled water. The GLWI provides that, "Americans drank 6.8 billion gallons of bottled water in 2004, compared to 15.3 billion gallons of soda. The Beverage Marketing Corps. predicts that bottled water will soon be Americans 2nd most popular beverage (soft drinks rank 1st)." The fact that the water is "bottled" only confounds our current plastic footprint. What on Earth are we to do?