Tag: Penn State Berks Sustainability Team

The Happy Little Trees had fun with Southwest Middle School!

Arial CharlesFall 2022 Project Teams

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!

 

 

 

 

Culiminating Thoughts on EACAP Project

Asher Charles FairFall 2016 Teams

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This project ended up being a huge success for myself, Derek, and Ben. We had expressed uncertainties with how to go about what our goal was (and sometimes did not even know what we were aiming for), but we were able to get it together and create a successful sustainability website that will eventually have its content copied to the official Penn State Berks Sustainability website. I think this will end up being very successful in terms of getting people aware because there are a lot of people out there that care about creating a better environment in which to live, and I would venture to guess that people would view information from a world-renowned university’s web page more than just a personal web page like the one we created, however we have seen the site pick up some views over the course of doing the project.

For now, the web page can be seen HERE. (https://eacapenvironmentalist.wordpress.com/). Eventually, it will be linked on the Penn State Berks website and much more accessible and much easier to locate for the average person who is looking up sustainability topics.

Also successful was our research on deforestation. We were able to tie that in with our service project of creating the web page quite well, and the great amount of information we were able to get on the topic will hopefully help everyone who stopped by our poster and everyone who saw the presentation in class.

Our poster presentation and our slide show presentation were both very successful in terms of relaying the large amounts of information we gathered to the public. In total, 11 people stopped by our poster, and over 20 students were in attendance at our slide show presentation. If every person shared our website (or eventually the PSU Berks Sustainability web site) with someone, and they shared it with someone, the site should accumulate hundreds or even thousands of views, at which point people would likely be acting on the issues at hand.

This project was worth the time and effort we put into it. We got out of it what we put into it, and based on what we got out of it, all three of us can tell that the great amount of effort we put into it has paid off.

Out with a Bang

Rebecca N WebsterPenn State Berks Sustainability Team

As our final post, we are reflecting on our project throughout the semester. We enjoyed working together and feel we made a difference in how people view food waste and recycling. We wanted to use to media as our major way of connecting to students and faculty on campus. The survey worked well because it allowed us to see how many students take advantage of the trash and recycling services we have on campus. It contributed to our service as well as our research. We designed a petition in order to “make something happen.” Not only did we want to advocate for recycling, but we wanted to contribute to the progress. We have heard from multiple sports teams that there are not enough recycling bins around campus and at sports’ complexes. This petition will hopefully change that. We met weekly in the library to work on our project throughout the semester and this was a big contributing factor to our success as a team.

 

 

We Are and Will Always Be… THE GREEN MEDIA

Wrapping Up the Process

Asher Charles FairFall 2016 Teams

eacap-website

We have put together teasers and articles regarding six topics related to sustainability. Those topics are as follows: Bee Hives, Rain Barrels, Bat Houses, MOBIUS Recycling, Paper Waste Reduction, and the Food Recovery Network. Eventually, these short blurbs and articles will go on the Penn State Berks Sustainability webpage. In the mean time, we set up our own personal website titled EACAP Environmentalist, which you can access HERE, to get a good idea of the work we have done in making people more aware of the importance of sustainability and how it affects various aspects of the environment.

Our poster is almost done. We still plan on adding some facts about our research paper, which was on a totally separate topic: deforestation. The research paper itself is pretty much done. We are also going to present images of our personal webpage (not the official Penn State one) on our poster so people can get a feel for what we were able to accomplish.

In terms of our plan to issue a recycling survey to people to see what they actually recycle out of the recyclable materials that they use, we did not see how this would relate to any aspect of our project and our end goal. We may still do it since it does relate to sustainability, but it will be done on a much smaller scale and as a much smaller portion of our project since it is not the main goal of the EACAP project.

Nearing the End

Allison Claire StaufferPenn State Berks Sustainability Team

For our meeting outside of class today, The Green Media met in the library to discuss how we will carry out the final presentation after break. We decided to make a PowerPoint in order to present our information clearly to the rest of the class. The picture included in this post is of the wonderful pagers that library hands out so you can start to work on your project in a different location while waiting for a private room to work and focus in!!
pager
We Are… THE GREEN MEDIA

We can see the finish line!

ajb6310Penn State Berks Sustainability Team

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

Environments?!? What do you think?!?

Samuel David MarksB and S Incorporated

On Friday, October 28 my team and I assisted the Penn State Berks Sustainability Team here on campus. B and S Incorporated jumped on the oppurtunity to welcome the fifth graders, staff and faculty coming from Glenside Elementary School in Reading Pa. My team assisted the fifth graders by leading our own paint station. At this station, Ben Sam M and Sam G asked the students to construct a painting of their environment. We asked students what they thoughtimg_1368 of when they heard the word environment and watched over them to make sure that they would not make a mess. Once the fifth graders completed their paintings we took their artwork and left it in front of the window to dry.The whole time this was going on my team was given the task to make sure the students had all of the materials they needed. In between station switches my team and I had to run to the bathroom and wash their brushes and water cups and make sure the station was ready for the next group of kids. Once time ran out for painting Ben, Sam G and I joined the fifth graders on a tour around our campus which ultimately ended once we got to the greenhouse. The fifth graders returned from the greenhouse and my team assisted in cleaning up and packing away the materials that we used for the field trip. Overall, we all agree that it was a fulfilling experience to give back to the community! Each of us believe that the best form of action regarding the environment is to continually spread education and get as many people as possible acclimated to what is happening in our environment today. img_1367

Ready, Set….

Asher Charles FairFall 2016 Teams

 

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As a group, we further discussed our plan about how we are going to go about the EACAP project and broke it up into more specific parts.

We still plan to distribute to about 10 people a list, where they will write down a large amount of things that they use, what they use that can be recycled, and what they actually recycle. This list will be formatted in the form of three columns, and was made today. The columns will consist of one of each thing listed above: what people use, what recyclable products they use, and what they actually recycle. We will then construct a graph for the 10 people with three lines: one with total things that they use, another with total recyclable things that they use, and another with things that they actually recycle. We will note how much larger the overall usage of recyclable materials is in comparison to the overall recycling to better understand how important it is that we make people aware that waste reduction needs to take place.

We will then write blurbs/short articles about each of the six initiatives (Bee Hives, MOBIUS Recycling, Food Recovery Network, Rain Barrels, Paper Waste Reduction,  and Bat Houses) on the Sustainability website providing an overview of each initiative and adding an appropriate image to each. The images were all gathered this morning.

Knowing that our graphs will most likely show that not everything that needs to be recycled gets recycled by the people we survey, we will also mention how improvements in terms of increased recycling and waste reduction will help each of the initiatives be more successful not only at Penn State Berks, but anywhere.

Let’s Talk About Research

Allison Claire StaufferPenn State Berks Sustainability Team

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