Hola!

We are the Greenhouse Pack!

A team of first and second year students that are working on the EACAP Project for the Fall of 2021.

Meet the members of the Greenhouse Pack!

Nicole, our Team Researcher

Ayaan, our Team Liaison

Alejandra, our Team Leader

Vidda, our Team Secretary

We are excited to share our project and findings with you all!

Research Component

The environmental issue we chose to do research on is the butterfly population decline.

Here is what we learned…

Over the years, 450 species of butterflies have been at a declining rate of almost 2 percent per year. In the past few years, the number of butterflies that migrated to California during the winter has declined 99%. In addition, the butterfly population has dropped to below 2,000 which is a very sudden change in a short  amount time. It is evident that the butterfly population is currently facing a crisis. So what are some things that could possibly be causing this decline?

• Climate change has caused warmer fall temperatures which leads to physiological stress on the butterflies because they are sensitive to slight changes in the temperature 
• Warmer fall temperatures reduce the available food butterflies need to survive 
• Warmer fall temperatures prolong the amount of time the butterflies’ predators are active

Although it may seem as if there are no options for us to help reduce this decline, we have found some solutions to the issue. Some of these solutions include…

• Reduce our use of mosquito repellent because it is toxic to butterflies
• Planting milkweed to attract more butterflies 
• Creating your own Butterfly sanctuaries in your own backyard or creating botanical gardens 

Butterflies are essential to our environment. They are seen as a sign that any environment they are seen in is not filled with pollution, industrial waste, etc. We can each do our part in helping their population be restored!

Here is the brochure we created for our research component:

Service Component

We are currently working on a Sustainability and Resiliency Plan for the city of Reading, PA. Our group is working with the City of Reading Public Works Sustainability & Solid Waste Department. The goal with our service was to create content to share their new Quadruple Bottom Line as well as their sustainability venn diagram.

What is the Quadruple Bottom Line?

The Quadruple Bottom Line works by adding governance to the environmental, social, and financial well-being of the city of Reading. This governance includes involving the public in the different processes of action being taken within the communities, being transparent with the public about how money is being spent, what projects are being done, and involving all stakeholders and constituents in the decision-making process. The Quadruple Bottom line essentially holds the government of the city of Reading accountable to the constituents in order to avoid conflict but also holds the constituents accountable to the government.

Our service

Our service consisted of creating Tiktok content about the Quadruple Bottom Line as well as ways we can all be more sustainable in our own personal lives. We also completely redesigned the sustainability venn diagram for a more youthful look. Our goal with our content was to create something that would attract people in our age group since they were the main targeted audience. For this reason we used trendy songs in our TikTok videos that are currently popular and we also used a more modern design for the venn diagram.

Here is the venn diagram we redesigned (our TikTok videos are posted on our YouTube channel, link is at the end of this post!) :

Previous design versus our new design!

Reflecting on our experience as the Greenhouse Pack

Overall, this project allowed each of us to learn how to put a meaningful message out into the world and make an impact even within a short video clip or a simple post. We learned that it is not about what you say but how you say it. We also learned how much impact we each truly have in our environment and the importance of sharing what we learned with others around us. When it comes to our service component, we truly valued that the city of Reading genuinely cares about its communities especially the younger generations because they want to make sure that we are provided with a healthy and sustainable environment even as we grow older. We also valued that they want to be more transparent and they value our opinions on future decisions. Our research component not only opened our eyes about the decline in the butterfly population but it also made us realize that there are many more issues that we may not even be aware of. We now want to place importance on the issues we learned about but also search for new issues that may not have been heard of yet. Nonetheless, our journey as the Greenhouse Pack was truly enjoyable. We learned a variety of things about our issue, about the communities of Reading, and most importantly, about ourselves and our impact on this world.

Link to our socials!

Here is a link to our YouTube channel so that you too can watch our journey as the Greenhouse pack as well as our content!

Lastly, here is the link to our official TikTok account!

THANK YOU!