Energy Conservation Project Continued

What I Learned from a Crate of Plastic Bottles

Our planet is currently facing an environmental and ecological crisis. Authorities and scientists argue about the causes, extent, and need for urgency in remediating the damage. There are some absolutes, however, and one of those, American consumption of plastic bottles, is what I am concerning my project with.

I chose to study how much landfill space our classroom could save if we simply recycled plastic bottles. View my PowerPoint here. The project was a success in many regards; it taught me ways to extrapolate data, and how to present those findings in a graphic, non numerical manner. I also learned about the power of my assumptions. In this project, I used the assumption that the bottles would not be crushed down at the dump, which had huge implications for how much space they would occupy. I also assumed, in my extrapolations, that each classroom would produce as many bottles as ours, which I know is a poor assumption because we have more students in our five classes than any other teacher in the school. I also assumed that each large high school in the ASD would produce as many bottles as our school, which may also be inaccurate, because we only have around 840 students at ERHS, while many other schools have close to 2,000. View my first Excel Spreadsheet here. (Created 10.22)

View my fumbling video here.

Wow. Watching myself give a presentation is painful. I appear to have some type of spastic muscle disorder in which my hands constantly flail around and a speech disorder in which I tend to repeat the words "um" and "like" (the latter I am especially embarrassed about). I never had realized how much I tend to use "fillers" as well...repeating myself when I'm looking for words, for example. I made a mistake in which I read 100,000 as "10,000", which is silly. But the thing that I am most embarrassed about is how much my lack of enthusiasm for this subject came through. I love talking about environmental issues, and trying to convince others of the gravity of the situation. After watching myself, I'm not jazzed to recycle. This is sad...I hope this is not always how my lectures to the classes are....
But on the brighter side, I think my voice was clear and not too loud or soft. And heck, the powerpoint sure showed up well.

I do feel like my project has made a difference, however. Not especially in regards to my own consumption habits; I have always recycled plastics 1, 2, aluminum, paper, and tin, but for my students. I purposely gave my presentation to two of our classes three weeks before the project was due, in order to compare how many bottles were recycled before and after I talked to the students about the value of sustainability. View my second Excel Spreadsheet here. (11.13) There was a considerable increase in the average amount of bottles recycled in our classroom after I gave those talks.

This project taught me a lot of things, foremost among those, is patience. I had to have patience with the video camera, slow computers, and mostly, helping to alter and encourage my students to care enough to toss their plastic into the recycling crate. I have always been frustrated by people who throw recyclable materials away when a recycling bin is right next to the trashcan, so in someways, I need to control my frustration and learn to be patient and helpful.

On an inspiring note, I also realized the impact I can have to motivate a group of students to help conserve and think about their actions, and the possible long term affects of that little group of students if they could touch their entire school, and district, and state, and nation, and world......