Category Archives: The City of Reading Public Works Outreach & Education

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Go green or go home

  By lzr5358 • April 21, 2022 , , ,

We are the “Go or go home” team

 

Names of team members: Joel Pliego, Johan Martinez, Daniel Nour, Luiz Ribeiro

Brochure

Our Environmental Issue
• Our environmental issue is pollution in local parks. We solved this issue by collecting trash around these parks and using
the accumulated trash to create an art piece to ensure the garbage doesn’t go to waste.
People litter and fail to throw out their trash.
• Littering can lead to soil, water, and air pollution.
The trash we throw out can end up in our waterways, leading to
consuming these toxins and contaminants.
• Not only does littering affect humans, but these contaminants can
stunt plant growth and cause health issues in animals living in the
area

Idealization
• When we collected the trash, we noticed there was a large number of water bottles which sparked the idea to create an art piece made out of plastic bottles Once the trash was collected, we met and  ideas and plans on how to complete the project.

Making of the Art Piece
• Our ideas narrowed down to a few options, including a water bottle
chandelier, a rocket ship, and paintings using reusable material.
• With that we gathered the construction materials which were hot glue
guns, scissors, and printing paper in the trash of one of the PSU berks
printing stations

With all materials and trash collected we made the construction of the
rocket ship made out of water bottles and reusable trash.

Reflection: With this project we realized how much local pollution there is in our local environment, and that we should definitely take better care of our environment that we live in.

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The Greenhouse Pack spreads a sustainability plan!

Image

  By aql5749 • November 10, 2021 , ,

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!

 

 

 

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The Lion Kings Help Keep Reading Sustainable

  By Justin Renninger • November 10, 2021 , ,

Hello all! Our EACAP team, consisting of Cole Sinnott, AJ Everett, and myself, Justin Renninger, would like to introduce ourselves and our project. The team name we have given ourselves is “The Lion Kings”, and we are working on researching how to make the city of Reading more sustainable. We are focusing on the effects of climate change, mainly targeting a younger audience. We hope to reach that audience and raise more awareness for the issue we are facing, not just in Reading, but in our country and world, as well.

The issue that we researched was climate resiliency, more specifically how pollution is an issue in our area. Both air pollution and land pollution, such as litter, is a big issue in the area of Reading, as with any larger city, and we researched how it is caused, was the consequences are, and how it can possibly be solved. Our service project that we did was create a video around 3-5 minutes in length that showcased testimonies from people around campus and the city of Reading on what climate resiliency means to them, and how they feel climate change has affected them.

We thought that the project was interesting and it opened our eyes to the issue of pollution, and how the city of Reading needs to improve in that area in order to become more sustainable. While the EACAP project was more of a semester-long project, it was one that helped you gain some knowledge about the things you were researching and studying. We feel like we gained some knowledge on how the city of Reading can improve on its sustainability and that there is some work to be done from here forward. Our message to the youth and other individuals is to help improve the sustainability of not just the city of Reading, but also your communities, wherever you live. It is important to make sure that we pay attention to our environment and that we are doing our part everyday to keep the environment clean and sustainable everywhere.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-i59zeV6-r93WkQFDl Wcq1Qniz8lUwHa/view?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wnQZ7IT1LYnzGPNZcHOLtk_-WDbu8B8j84cFRRZZpFY/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sBxxfg9S5Xus_usH2fbkE-4axTA9HsJSRvQYgYrDJN0/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ro4tOq_r9ohNbUPg0fCdx_ETPjum5BSNR2rmP4-pJQ0/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ro4tOq_r9ohNbUPg0fCdx_ETPjum5BSNR2rmP4-pJQ0/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10kqswVAK3claBfUO7dknfbOh4g9LmA1D/view?usp=sharing

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Green Mamba

  By Nan Jiang • February 9, 2020 , ,

Hi, everyone:

Our group will take part in replenishing our tree canopy throughout the City of Reading. We made an appointment with the organization on Feb 13th and we are going to discuss the action what we do.  I believe this will help the community reduce more production of carbon dioxide. We are try our best to make our environment better.

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Team Introduction

  By Mike Recalo • February 3, 2020 , ,

We are the Green Team! We will be working with The City of Reading Public Works. A little bit about the Group, I am Michael Recalo I am a junior Penn State Berks and I am a Business management and marketing major. Cesar Martinez is a sophomore at Penn State Berks and grew up in the city of Reading. Christy Goicochea is a Junior at Penn State Berks and is going for a Business major. Carmen Hernández is a senior at Penn State Berks and is a Communication Arts and Science major. We look forward to completing this project! We will be working with the City of reading public works to make informative works for kids about the 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). We cant wait to get kids involved in learning about how to be aware of the 3 R’s.

 

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The Green Team’s Service Reflection

  By Abigail Grace Files • April 28, 2019 ,

Who helped us with our service?

We teamed up with the City of Reading’s Department of Public Works. The Public Works Department provides a variety of programs that affect the health, convenience and comfort of Reading residents. Some examples of what Public Works deals with is graffiti removal and street light replacements. From this department, we teamed up with Laura Cordero, who is the Public Works Public Outreach and Education Coordinator. She educates students in grades K-12 on how they can better the community. Mrs. Cordero then paired us up with the South of Penn Taskforce, a non-profit that also works to better the City of Reading with block parties, financial literacy classes, and community clean-ups.

What we did for the community:

With the help of Mrs. Cordero and the South of Penn we were able to do: community surveying, community clean-ups, clean-up marketing, and environmental education.

One of the very first things we did with Mrs. Cordero and SOP was create flyers to advertise one of SOP’s clean-ups. SOP coordinator, Tony Veloz, taught us how to use CANVA, a free flyer-creation site, and we made practice flyers for the Great American Clean-up. These were made for Mr. Veloz to potentially use in the future with SOP.

Throughout the semester there were multiple clean up opportunities in Reading that we were a part of. On Saturday March 16th we worked with SOP to clean up the streets. We met at Kenny’s market on Bingaman street, and from there we split up into multiple groups. By the end of the clean-up, there was about 20-30 bags of trash collected.

Another cleanup that we were a part of was with the Youth Volunteer Corps. On Sunday April 14th, we worked with them to help kids cleanup City Park in Reading. Along with cleaning up the park, we also took part in pulling weeds, mulching and planting flowers.

The next activity that we got together to complete was the community surveying. On March 29th, we went out onto 6th and 7th streets of Reading to survey the community on their opinions of SOP, and what they want to see from the taskforce. We were able to collect 10 surveys for SOP to use to get a feel for the community and address the needs that the surveyors stated. As a result of surveying, we were able to inform the community about SOP and how they can get involved to help Reading. We were also able to help SOP get a feel of residents’ opinions on them and what events they need to add to get residents active in the community.

The final service activity we took part in was the Green Between the Courtyard Event at Reading High School on April 11th. Mrs. Cordero tasked us with informing the high school students about how to reduce their usage of single-use plastics. We created a poster filled with facts and pictures of single-use plastics in the environment. On our display table we also had 8 of the most commonly littered single-use plastics. When students came up to our table we described the harms of single-use plastics, how to reduce their usage, and alternatives to them. Since the biggest harm to single-use plastics is that they take a long time to break down, we played an interactive game with the students. Of the plastics we had on our display table, we had students guess how long it took for the plastics to break down. This game went over very well, students seemed engaged and were shocked to learn that some plastics took hundreds of years to break down. Some of the students even said that they were going to stop using some of the single-use plastics we had on our table. This event was fulfilling to take part in because we felt like we were helping to better the community by educating them on single-use plastics.

What we gained from our service:

The service component of our EACAP project was a fulfilling experience for all members in our group. The biggest lesson we learned from our service is that public education is super important in making environmental strides. This lesson came to light from our Reading High School event. If the community knew what changes they had to make to better the environment, they would be more likely to enact these changes. Along with this, we learned that there are small steps everyone can take to help better the environment. Something as simple as switching from plastic to reusable water bottles can help clean up the environment. The final lesson we learned is that community is important to make change. This was observed through our clean-ups and surveying. In both experiences, the people of Reading were eager to learn how to help the city and go out and enact change. In the clean-ups people from all over the city got together in an effort to better the environment. If the community comes together to create a change, the results will follow.

Our Message to the Youth of Reading:

Change is possible. If you are determined, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. We learned this through our service, with hard work and determination we were able to accomplish our service goals for this project. What were our service goals? For the Green Team to make any kind of impact on Reading’s community and environment. We accomplished this through the clean-ups, surveying, and public education. After doing our service we feel that the City is cleaner and people are thinking “greener”. If four college kids can come together to make an environmental difference in our community, so can you!

-The Green Team

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The Green Team’s Service Reflection

  By Abigail Grace Files • April 28, 2019 , , ,
Who helped us with our service?

We teamed up with the City of Reading’s Department of Public Works. The Public Works Department provides a variety of programs that affect the health, convenience and comfort of Reading residents. Some examples of what Public Works deals with is graffiti removal and street light replacements. From this department, we teamed up with Laura Cordero, who is the Public Works Public Outreach and Education Coordinator. She educates students in grades K-12 on how they can better the community. Mrs. Cordero then paired us up with the South of Penn Taskforce, a non-profit that also works to better the City of Reading with block parties, financial literacy classes, and community clean-ups.

What we did for the community:

With the help of Mrs. Cordero and the South of Penn we were able to do: community surveying, community clean-ups, clean-up marketing, and environmental education.

One of the very first things we did with Mrs. Cordero and SOP was create flyers to advertise one of SOP’s clean-ups. SOP coordinator, Tony Veloz, taught us how to use CANVA, a free flyer-creation site, and we made practice flyers for the Great American Clean-up. These were made for Mr. Veloz to potentially use in the future with SOP.

Throughout the semester there were multiple clean up opportunities in Reading that we were a part of. On Saturday March 16th we worked with SOP to clean up the streets. We met at Kenny’s market on Bingaman street, and from there we split up into multiple groups. By the end of the clean-up, there was about 20-30 bags of trash collected.

Another cleanup that we were a part of was with the Youth Volunteer Corps. On Sunday April 14th, we worked with them to help kids cleanup City Park in Reading. Along with cleaning up the park, we also took part in pulling weeds, mulching and planting flowers.

The next activity that we got together to complete was the community surveying. On March 29th, we went out onto 6th and 7th streets of Reading to survey the community on their opinions of SOP, and what they want to see from the taskforce. We were able to collect 10 surveys for SOP to use to get a feel for the community and address the needs that the surveyors stated. As a result of surveying, we were able to inform the community about SOP and how they can get involved to help Reading. We were also able to help SOP get a feel of residents’ opinions on them and what events they need to add to get residents active in the community.

The final service activity we took part in was the Green Between the Courtyard Event at Reading High School on April 11th. Mrs. Cordero tasked us with informing the high school students about how to reduce their usage of single-use plastics. We created a poster filled with facts and pictures of single-use plastics in the environment. On our display table we also had 8 of the most commonly littered single-use plastics. When students came up to our table we described the harms of single-use plastics, how to reduce their usage, and alternatives to them. Since the biggest harm to single-use plastics is that they take a long time to break down, we played an interactive game with the students. Of the plastics we had on our display table, we had students guess how long it took for the plastics to break down. This game went over very well, students seemed engaged and were shocked to learn that some plastics took hundreds of years to break down. Some of the students even said that they were going to stop using some of the single-use plastics we had on our table. This event was fulfilling to take part in because we felt like we were helping to better the community by educating them on single-use plastics.

What we gained from our service:

The service component of our EACAP project was a fulfilling experience for all members in our group. The biggest lesson we learned from our service is that public education is super important in making environmental strides. This lesson came to light from our Reading High School event. If the community knew what changes they had to make to better the environment, they would be more likely to enact these changes. Along with this, we learned that there are small steps everyone can take to help better the environment. Something as simple as switching from plastic to reusable water bottles can help clean up the environment. The final lesson we learned is that community is important to make change. This was observed through our clean-ups and surveying. In both experiences, the people of Reading were eager to learn how to help the city and go out and enact change. In the clean-ups people from all over the city got together in an effort to better the environment. If the community comes together to create a change, the results will follow.

Our Message to the Youth of Reading:

Change is possible. If you are determined, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. We learned this through our service, with hard work and determination we were able to accomplish our service goals for this project. What were our service goals? For the Green Team to make any kind of impact on Reading’s community and environment. We accomplished this through the clean-ups, surveying, and public education. After doing our service we feel that the City is cleaner and people are thinking “greener”. If four college kids can come together to make an environmental difference in our community, so can you!

-The Green Team

 

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One Piece At a Time

  By ejm5773 • April 28, 2019 , , ,

If you live in a city it is not very rare to see some trash littering the street and sidewalks. People become numb to all of this and begin to lose touch with how important it is to clean up after themselves. This past semester The Green Guys consisting of Eric Muttik, Dell Jensen, Yufei He, and Chandler Bedwell helped improve the city of Reading one piece of trash at a time. Prior to meeting with Laura Cordero of the City of Reading public works department we were quite unsure what we were getting ourselves into and what exactly we could do to help our community. Meeting with Laura truly opened our eyes to all of the projects that the public works department has to manage, and just how hard it is for them to keep up with everything. Laura introduced us to a few non profits such as South of Penn Taskforce and Barrio Allegrio and explained in great depth just how important groups like these are to our communities, but how they often go unnoticed. The first service project we did involved meeting with SOP and getting to know all about them and how they prioritize educating the public about sustainability and taking pride in ones’ community. As a group we made fliers that could potentially be handed out to the public providing information about the group and what they stand for. For our first real service came not long after we made the fliers, and we were tasked with cleaning a few blocks within Reading, not far from our school. SOP tasked us along with other volunteers to specific areas in which to clean up the sidewalks, streets, and other areas around us. Within the two hours that was allotted our team had amassed around 15-20 bags of trash from an area not all that large. This was quite surprising and we found that no matter how much we picked up there was always more just around the corner. The second service outing we had was at Global Youth Service day at City Park in Reading. For this event we were not only tasked with the cleaning up and maintenance of the park, but we also became team leaders helping direct middle and high schoolers to participate. Some of the tasks that we accomplished as a team was the weeding, mulching, and planting of flowers around several monuments as well as the collection of any debris that was found. This was by far our favorite event as we really got to see the finished result of our hard work. The park looked significantly better after all of the volunteers put their best efforts into making it a better place. The final cleaning project we took part in was the Schuylkill River Trail clean up. This took place at the head of the trail and we were tasked with performing trail maintenance along with cleaning up the trail as we go. The amount of trash we found here was also alarming. By the end of this event the trail looked substantially better. As a whole our team learned just how important it is to be mindful of what we do with our waste and instead of seeing that piece of trash on the ground and thinking someone else will get that, be proactive and understand that if we want our communities to stay as nice as possible it is up to every single person as an individual to make a concerted effort to do the little things even if they do not seem like much. Events like Global Youth Service day are also critical as the youth get to see hands on what a change they can make is exceedingly important as it teaches them the significance of taking pride in their community. If there is anything that The Green Guys could teach others it would be to understand that change does not start by waiting around, it takes active prideful members of a community to make and maintain clean, happy cities.  

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Team Outfall Over and Out

  By rmw5588 • April 28, 2019 , , ,

And just like that the semester is over. Since our last post we have presented our project to Penn State Berks, presented our research and outfall net options to the City of Reading, and presented our semester’s worth of work to our Bisci class. These recent events saw us finishing up our work and showing several different audiences the dangers of water pollution and how outfall nets can help solve this problem.

This semester, our team has learned a lot as a group, but also as individuals. Here are some of our thoughts on our work. Dillon Giadosh: I think it was interesting to work on a project of this scale. I have been a part of a lot of projects throughout the past few years through my time in Scouts and in college, but this one was definitely different. It was intriguing to figure out all the details required for our project, and how we progressed throughout the semester was fun to be a part of. There were a lot of elements involved and something new to always be found throughout the process. It all comes down to the fact that we could do something so small, yet so big to help the environment by just researching possibilities. I enjoyed working with my group and doing something different than the typical grind of classes and tests we all face throughout each semester. I would certainly be interested in finding out if our research warrants a project to come in the fall semester. Ryan Wentzel: For me this project was interesting because it shows how a simple project can help solve world problems. Usually, environmental issues feel like they are global problems and that there is little local communities can make to help solve world crises. However, from the research we conducted and the city officials we talked too, I now see the impact local projects can make. Companies like StormX and StormTrap prove that local projects to protect streams with outflows can collect hundreds of pounds of trash per year and this significantly cuts down on local water pollution and helps reduce ocean pollution as a whole. All in all, everyone needs to do their part to help the environment. Alfonso Rivera: This project was really insightful in regards to just learning and monitoring the amount of trash there is in distinctive area and working on a project that will directly affect the environment for the better on a long run. I gained a lot of perspective and awareness through this project, as we were tasked to create a net that will capture trash and gross pollutants of all shapes and sizes, and one wouldn’t really think that the littlest of trash matters, but it all piles up at some point. My message to the youth would be just for them to be mindful of your trash as the smallest negative contribution to the environment goes a long way, but the same thing can be said when doing something positive for the environment so play your part and the net will become lighter. Forrest Willman: I am thankful that I participated in a college class that is dedicated to preserving our local environment. We often overlook the negative impacts that we make on our community. We choose to value comfort and productivity over sustainable practices. EACAP has taught me about the current state of the earth and I realize now that we must globally come together to protect the remaining ecosystems from extinction. Our community project involved researching outfall nets in hopes that we would capture trash from the streets of Reading. This project posed many challenges that required creativity and problem solving to accomplish our goals. At the end of our presentation, a city official commended us on our efforts and appreciated the do-it-yourself model. I realize now that many community projects are hard to complete without the necessary funding. I hope that they fabricate a do-it-yourself outfall net in the fall semester. Eventually this idea could be implemented onto other outfalls in Reading and beyond, allowing for an affordable solution to water pollution.

All in all, this semester has been very insightful and worthwhile for our whole team. We hope our work can inspire future students and help the City of Reading cut down on pollution.