Posts by Jon McMurray and Alison Queen

Hey guys! Jon here. Sorry this update is coming so late but I’ve been having technical difficulties, I had another nice little video planned for you all, but for some reason, technology is just not agreeing with me. Anywho, this past week we completed the monitoring phase of our project! Very exciting! Really there wasn’t much to it other then going up to a select few recycling/trash bins around campus and recording how full the were. What we’re really trying to figure out, is how much recycling is actually used on campus rather then people just throwing everything in the garbage (which, as I am told, some people actually do! crazy, right?). Anyway, we kept close tabs on these bins for the last week, and now comes the fun part, making sense of all the data! So stay tuned!

~Jon

This whole process has been very interesting!  I don’t think I can say that I’ve been apart of something this “hands on” since I’ve been at this college.  I’m really learning first hand how serious the problems are that we face.  I picked the recycling group because that is the area I am most interested in.  I am NOT a political science major, nor would I consider it one of my strong points.  I would even go as far to say that, before entering this class, I knew close to nothing about sustainability (just like most Americans, and this lack of education is one of the biggest problems).  I am grateful to have learned so much in just this one class.  Everyone seems to offer some truly insightful ideas.  Just mapping the recycling bins was a shocking experience for me.  I was horrified to learn how few recycling bins are in our buildings.  I thought for sure, for some reason, there would be a lot more.  This did a lot to light the sustainability fire in my heart.  I want to take steps to do what I can to put more and better recycling bins on campus.  Monitoring the bins was a whole other story.  This wasn’t a difficult task and I really didn’t mind taking 2 seconds out of my day to notice the recycling levels.  They don’t seem to be used as much as I thought they would have been.  I’m just fortunate to have taken a class where the project is forcing me to notice environmental conditions, note it, and do something about it.  I’m really looking forward to seeing all of my groups data put together to see what we’ve come up with.

~Alison

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