Tag Archives: Food Waste

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Green Tree Peas Add a Splash of Color to Southwest Middle School

  By Alana Bangura • December 3, 2022 , , ,

Hello, We are the Green Tree Peas and we currently consist of three members. 

These members are Alana, Kimberly, and Gaetcha.

Alana Bangura

  • Hello, I am Alana currently completing my senior year at PSU Berks campus. Some quick and fun facts about me are that I enjoy music in my free time, I have my own event decor business, and I was on two different step teams at two different times in my life. 

Kimberly

  • Hi! My name is Kimberly Nicholas. I am a 3rd year student here at Penn State Berks. A couple fun facts about me are that I love horror movies, listening to music, and playing video games. My computer – my pc, is my LOVE and my LIFE I even built it myself. One of the things I achieved and own that I’m proud of.

Gaetcha

  • Hi, My name is Gaetcha Denis. I am a 2nd year student at Penn State Berks. Here’s some fun facts about me. I love to edit videos in my free time, paint and listen to music. I am a big fan of fantasy novels and anything that’s non fiction as well. I’m proud to have interned in a hospital during my last year of High School and getting to work in customer service after graduating truly changed my outlook on customer care.

 

Our research issue

Our research topic centered around Food waste and its contribution to greenhouse gasses on a National level and we decided that the best sustainable development goal to focus on with our research would be goal 13, Climate Action. During our research we gathered much information on the ways that food waste has contributed to the substantial amount of greenhouse gases being released into the environment. We also have come up with many solutions in which we could work toward eradicating or at least lowering some of these contributing factors.

EACAP Research Powerpoint

Our Service Plan

For our service component as a team we collaborated with Southwest Middle School in order to create colorful topic related tiles that would be given back to the school and placed in different rooms for the students to be able to see. Our ideas for the designs came from what we believed would be most suitable in a school environment but also covered different components of our research. We focused on food, energy, and natural resources because we believed these topics would symbolize or closely link to the research we were able to collect. 

Our Tiles

 

Final Thoughts/ Reflection

Summary: Overall, despite a couple obstacles and difficulties, we really enjoyed being a part of this project. Through collaboration with not only our PSU (Penn State University) counterparts but also with the MSU (Moscow University) students we learned how to work together with other people who share similar goals. We also appreciate how this project offered us a lens to look at environmentalism. This panel project was very important to us because the three of us love art, and it gives us an opportunity to go out into the world, starting with a middle school in our own community. This project assisted us in being able to make small changes happen and educate young people through art about the beauty of the environment and how to maintain it all while trying to make a difference.

To the Youth: Take the time to get creative and join in helping your community! There are plenty of things you could do that may be of interest to you! Take our team for example, we all love art and this was a great way for us to dig into our own passions while playing a crucial role in giving back. 

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The Happy Little Trees had fun with Southwest Middle School!

  By Arial Charles • October 24, 2022 , , ,

The Happy Little Trees

Hello, we are the Happy Little Trees! Our group is composed of four first-year students named Fay, Arial, Maddie, and Molly. We all enjoy shopping, hanging out with friends, and painting! Fay is doing a double major in Risk Management and Entrepreneurship. She loves to play volleyball, cook, and play with her dog. Maddie is majoring in Business marketing. She enjoys spending time with her family, boating and traveling. Arial is majoring in business marketing. She loves cats and being creative. Molly is undecided. She enjoys taking naps and painting and loves dogs.

 

Research

While figuring out our research topic, we aimed for a topic that is related to both teams’ service projects. After hearing the MSU students were focusing on composting, we decided to research the issue of food waste today in the United States and Russia. We worked with students from MSU to compare and contrast the food waste in the US and the food waste in Russia. We went further to investigate our own cafeteria right here at Penn State Berks, and conducted an interview with Head Chef, Joseph Ertel. After many zoom meetings with the MSU students and continuing our research, we created a narrated presentation summing up all of our findings and comparisons. 

Food Waste Research Presentation Link

Service

For our service project, we decided to paint ceiling tiles for the Southwest Middle School right in Reading. We worked with Shana Holler, head of their science department to plan on painting the tiles for the science hallways. We focused our painting on the environment and sustainability. We painted two tiles each and created paintings that would showcase the importance of our planet and conserve its unique beauty. It was very fun to create art while also educating such a young group of students at the middle school. We created a video showing our progress and experience with this portion of our project.

Service Project Video (Ceiling Tiles)

Outcome

As a whole, we all worked well together and enjoyed both portions of this project. Although finding the right times to meet with MSU students was difficult, we still enjoyed getting to speak with them and collaborate on this project. It was great to grasp a different perspective of the world and be able to work with international students. We worked hard on our paintings as well and hope the students at Southwest Middle School enjoy them and make an impact on their views of their environment. It was a great experience and we were very glad that through this experience we were able to make new friends!

 

 

 

 

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Thrive to Survive Reflects

  By Amelia Elaine Seely • December 12, 2016 , ,

This semester has been a great semester for our team and our project turned out very well! We loved working together and broadening our horizons on these very important subjects. Many important lessons have been learned on waste and about the garbage patch and will effect our lives forever. Every time I drink a bottle of something from now on, I am going to assure it returns to a place that will break it down effectively and safely. This project really helped us with our teamwork and communication skills as it required a lot of outside of classroom work and effort. This semester has been very valuable to our whole team and we have all bonded in a great way!

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We can see the finish line!

  By ajb6310 • November 14, 2016 ,

During class today we finished our poster for the presentation in Gaige on the 28th!  We have our articles complete for the sustainability website including the topics of food waste in the American home, EPA’s WasteWise, Food waste and religion, and food waste around the world.  We are excited with how our project has come together, and excited to share our research with everyone else!

We Are… THE GREEN MEDIA

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Let’s Talk About Research

  By Allison Claire Stauffer • October 26, 2016 ,

Today, The Green Media met in the library to continue research. We discussed how we were finding it difficult to find relevant information on “waste reduction”; the topic was too broad. We decided that each member of the group would develop a more specific idea within our categories (Reading, major cities in PA, United States, and the World) in order to be able to write a final article. All the of the research done will tie in with the topic of food waste. This is where all of our research will come together when looking at the comparison of how different areas are taking action to control waste.

We Are… THE GREEN MEDIA

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Getting Down to Research

  By prb5062 • October 12, 2016 ,

Today we met with the research consultant, Brett Spencer, to discuss the best methods to conduct our research into waste reduction and sustainability. He pointed us the Penn State databases which are free to students and can be found on Penn State’s library homepage. He showed us how to effectively search through these databases to find the necessary information by using search methods that will pinpoint specific phrases in articles, how to use the advanced search tool, and use the citing tools already incorporated into the databases. Brett was a great resource that has given us the confidence to make our project credible by utilizing these databases to find periodicals, videos, and academic journals to support or project.

We are…..THE GREEN MEDIA!!!

 

 

 

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The Green Lion, Final Post! Our Video!

  By cfn5029 • May 8, 2016 ,

We would like to share a video with everyone the importance of food waste, so please have a look at our video here! Please feel free to share this video with friends and family, wherever you please. Use this video as a way to get the message out about how severe food waste really is!

The Importance of Food Waste

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Final Presentation – DMV (April 29, 2016)

  By drf5188 • April 29, 2016 , , ,

This project really taught all of us a lot. We had no idea that food waste was one of the big things that helped contribute to food waste. Also, our team was taught to always eat your food and leftovers, so learning that people just throw their leftovers away was a big shock to all three of us. This project was an eye opener and now whenever we eat our food, we make sure that we eat all of it, get smaller portions or save it and we inform others to do the same. We also learned a lot about how schools treat food waste and were really surprised the fact that University Park has a compost section in their dorms however Penn State Berks doesn’t and doesn’t really treat food waste as a serious concern! That was very shocking considering their both Penn State… but that’s another story. Being as though all three of us are leaving Penn State Berks we can’t really fight for this change here but stress to others to push for a way that Berks takes food waste seriously. Here is our final presentation, hope you enjoy! #TeamDMV

Food waste (Click here to view our EACAP PowerPoint Presentation)

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Earth Day! – DMV (April 29, 2016)

  By drf5188 • April 29, 2016 , , ,

One of our team members, Delta, decided to participate in Earth Day and help explain ways to help the Earth and she used our project as one way to teach others on Food Waste! Since there were mainly little kids there, she turned learning about food waste into a game. For example, the little kids would have to read the board to see if they could find ways to reduce food waste at home and they did and told her one way, they got a nice pretty stamp on their hand!

 

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Food Waste Presentation – DMV (April 29, 2016)

  By drf5188 • April 29, 2016 , , ,

This is our board we created, it has facts about food waste, for example bet you didn’t know food waste accounts for 37% of methane emission which contributes to climate change! If you came over to our board, you learned the different facts about food waste and also learned ways to reduce food waste in both homes and schools. For example composting helps reduce food waste because the food is helping build the nutrients in the soil, eating your left overs help reduce food waste because you’re getting rid of the food and also DONATING! You are helping the environment and feeding another person! People also learned how that benefits the environment because it reduces the amount of methane emitted and helps reduce climate change from drastically changing.

 

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