Trash clean up

Today was a sad end to our trash clean up project. We needed it to be a good one, so we headed up to Wolfeboro on such a nice day. We walked along the rail trail by Cresent Lake and Lake Wentworth. This was by far the dirtiest trail we had seen. There was a ton of trash and not many trashcans, although we did see a few. In just an hour of picking up trash we filled a whole black trash bag, which is definitely the most trash we had picked up in one trek yet! This was not surprising to us, considering the trail stretches through many communities and goes very far, which leads to way more people, and litter. Although we are done we will never not have trash on our minds and will always try be more sustainable for our earth #trashnomo.  Daily hours: 1 Total hours: 58

  After week one, we had picked up a ton of trash, and learned about how to live sustainably. This week, we needed to learn more about where our trash was going, and why it was important. This also leads us to learning more about why we should live sustainably, and that there are many ways to incorporate it into our everyday lives. We gathered a ton of information this week through interviews, and our own research. We made flyers on composting, sustainability, and recycling. We cleaned up at Highland Lake, and Bradely Lake. Personally, the interviews were what made me learn the most throughout our project. We interviewed three different people, Muffy White, Ron, and Mark Kozak, all about separate topics.  Our first interview was with my aunt, Muffy. She is a professional organizer and styler, and she lives a very sustainable lifestyle. One of our questions for her was based on how she deals with waste and clutter from people's houses. She talked to us about how she takes trash to t

 Today we wanted to take a little extra time to work on our poster board for express fest. We drove to staples and got a big poster board, and we bought markers, that were all in recyclable packaging. We worked on various parts of our poster for a few hours. This included summarizing the interviews that we conducted, printing our trash can maps, and using our art skills. We were able to put up the maps of where we have been and where trash cans could be placed. We also created a wall with our flyers and where we talked about them and how we got there. We also spent time putting all of our instagram reels and stories that we have been updating daily, into one big video so people can watch it and understand our message(@trashnomopew). Daily hours: 3 Total hours: 57

 Today, we interviewed my step dad, Mark Kozak, and talked to him about one of his old jobs. He worked for a recycling company out of Telluride, Colorado called Sunshine Recycling. His job for them was to create a buisness model for them to most effectively recycle. In his work, he realized he had to do the math to calculate how much energy it took to ship the recycling to the factory, versus how much energy it took to actually recycle the bottle. Because Telluride is so remote, he found that the energy to even ship the recycling was more than the actual recycling process. This brought up a really good point for us, as we have been promoting recycling as much as we could for the last few weeks. We asked him, so why should we recycle if its just more energy and more fuels? He talked about many benefits of recycling. Not only does our earth look cleaner when we get rid of waste, but we also protect animals, wildlife, and ourselfs. He went into some detail about the microplastics and how

 Today we did two things. First, we headed up to the Proctor area and went over to Mindy's house which overlooked Bradley Lake. We did not expect to find much success here, because it is a close community and little neighborhood. We first walked around the road and down to the edge of the water looking for trash. Then, we drove around Bradley Lake stopping at different points and getting out to find trash in the woods surrounding. Ever since we talked to Ron, we have been mindful of what direction the wind is going and generally looking in that direction because trash can be blown and caught onto trees or into water. We didn't think our trash clean up would be this unsuccessful today, so we decided to pack up and head over to elbow to see if we could find any trash, but we struck out again. After this, we decided to head down to Concord, on the main street, near Bonified, and Catherines mom's store, and hang our flyers. Our flyers are a basic infographic of recycling, and i

 This morning we woke up early and got ready for our hike. We went to hike mount kersarge. We brought our grip and grabbers and a trash bag so we could clean up the trail. To our suprise, there was barely any trash. There was one trash can at the bottom of the trail. When we got to the top, we hiked to the top of the fire tower. Up here, we met a friend named Ron and he talked to us for over an hour about the mountian and his experiences with the earth and outdoors. After talking about his background, we asked Ron about global warming, and he explained that due to global warming there has been a big increase in forest fires around New Hampshire. This will add a lot to the awareness we will spread about living a sustainable life to better our earth. We also talked to him about the cleanliness of the mountian. He explained to us that it’s not as much littering, as it is people carelessly putting down a water bottle for example and it blowing down. He told us that the wind is why we norma

 Today we woke up ready to grind. In order to be focused all day, we decided to start our morning with a sustainable breakfast. We made eggs and composted the egg shells and egg cartons from Catherine’s neighbor. After this we watched the Netflix documentary “Our Earth.” This documentary talked about the ways we can save the ocean before it’s too late. It talked about things such as greenhouse gas admissions made from man made products. It emphasized the importance that living a sustainable life will reflect on the world. Then, We spent a lot of time on our flyers. We made 3 flyers, about composting, sustainability, and recycling, that we will hang up later in the week around the community. Our interview with my aunt was very helpful to put together the composting flyer. We wanted to make these to teach the community simple things they can do to save the earth. We got a lot done today and it was helpful to be able to put all the things we have learned onto paper. Daily hours: 6 Total h

 We arrived at Highland lake at 10 and walked around the parking lot and down both roads and found quite a few glass bottles. Once it got close to 11, we realized it was going to rain, so we headed back to Proctor to get a workout in while we waited out the rain. Around 12 we went back to the lake, and walked on both the rail trail and the road ultimately to end up on the little beach. We cleaned up a good amount of trash on the actual beach, and in the woods around it. We walked all along the waterline around the lake, but the water was generally pretty clean. We mostly found old plastic, cans and glass bottles. Something we have noticed is the amount of recycling. Once we sort our trash, I think that we will find a good portion of recycling which is surprising to me because I thought there would be a lot more garbage. We did not see any trash cans at Highland Lake, and we will definitely need to make a map with trash cans on it for this lake. Daily hours: 4 Total hours: 35

 Today we had a more chill day and called my aunt Muffy who lives in Gloucester. She has lived in Massachusetts, Vermont, Colorado, and New York, and has a lot of different perspectives on trash. She talked to us about the sustainable life that she lives. She has a chicken coop, which truly does get rid of a lot of her excess leftover food waste. She also composts, recycles, and is very good about where her trash goes, as it is an important part of her life. Muffy runs an organizing and styling business, and she comes across all types of waste. She talked to us about where this waste goes. She cleans peoples houses, and helps them declutter, and she talked about hoe she takes all of the stuff people dont want to the consignment store. She throws away what is needed, but tries her best to find new ways to reuse things to overall reduce waste. Her work has taught her a lot about the trash systems in Gloucester, and she talked to us about a lot of them. After our call we did some extra re

  Going into our project, we wanted to make an impact on the earth by picking up a lot of trash. We quickly realized that there are many more ways than just picking up trash that can impact the earth over the two weeks. We decided we will try to live the most sustainable lives we could, with an emphasis on leaving as little trash as possible. While we were doing this, we wanted to find ways to educate people on how they can also be sustainable. We also noticed quickly that one of the reasons we found so much trash, had to do with the fact that there is not a very easy way for people to throw their stuff away. We also noticed that tighter, smaller communities tended to keep smaller ponds or community spaces more clean. First, we went to Lowes to get all of our gear. Something that was helpful for us was our trash grabbers. Then, the places we picked up trash were Kezar Lake, Lake Winnipesaukee, Elbow Pond, Putney Pond, and the beach in Portsmouth. All of these spaces had a lack of trash

Today our mentor, Lynda Everett came up to proctor and helped us and we talked to her about her environmental activism. We walked along the rail trail with her. As we walked along the rail trail, we looked for trash, but we didn't find much, as the Proctor community keeps it very clean. We talked with her about our week, and how we had been living a better and more sustainable life. We talked about about how it has been our goal to use less plastic, and prevent more waste by little thins such as packing lunches. These little things will prevent waste and if we can send the message to everyone to just do little easy things such as using a Tupperware over a plastic bag, it will help our earth immensely. Lynda also talked to us about more sustainable ways to live, and she helped us brainstorm more ideas for the coming week to broaden our trash pick up into a more useful and sustainable way. It was good to check in with our mentor and have her help come up with ideas, because we felt t

 First we began our day by crafting a sustainable on the road lunch and put it in tupperwares. Then, We traveled to the dump and gave them our trash. We tried to interview them, but they had a busy day of daunting trash sorting and getting away that they weren’t available for an interview. That was a sad part of our day, but we will return again for the interview a more happy day. Then we spent a lot of time in Concord. We walked around to try to find where the stores deal with their trash. We also wanted to find sustainable options around Concord to reduce trash. We found one specific store that was a wish come true for environmental activists like us. This store was called Bonafied, and it had basically all sustainable options, basically all reusable stuff. We recived the owners information so we can interview them in our upcoming days. In the end, we were very sad we couldn’t make friends with the dump people, but we understood their frustrations, as trash can make people not happy

 Today we woke up early and made the trip up to Alton Bay at Lake Winnipesaukee. First, we paddle boarded around the outskirts of the lake. Here, we found lots of cans that had either blown into the water or came from the houses on the lake. I was honestly very surprised with the amount of trash sitting in the shallow water. After we did this, we headed to the Alton public docs, on the sand. Here, we also found a pretty good amount of trash. Throughout our day, we only found one trash can in the parking lot, and it was very empty. We look o find more ways to make trash cans more visible so people don't throw the trash in the sand, it doesn't belong there. We picked up some maps of the lakes region lakes so we can mark them another day on where the best place for trash cans and dumpsters. I wonder if there is a trash day at Alton Bay, similar to what we saw on Sunday in Bow. On the way home, we stopped at a few different places looking for sustainability within the area, such as

 This morning we woke up early ands spent some time putting our reels, maps, and brainstormed ideas for our flyers. We want to put up flyers around the Proctor and Concord community to spread awareness on where to put trash and sustainable life. In the upcoming days we will take a trip to the dump, and sort our trash to see where our trash goes and how we can best throw it away. For the rest of our day (10-1:30) we went up to Elbow Pond. We walked both ways around the pond, and walked to the sauna and found barely any trash. Because it was so clean, we did some trail work around the sauna, cleaning up big sticks and making the trail easier to follow. This is the second day we have found little amounts of trash, but we aren't surprised as the Proctor community takes pride in keeping the pond clean. We did notice there wasn't any trash cans, but that is an easy fix! At our upcoming destinations, we predict to find more trash, such as the side of the highway or bigger tourist attr

Today we did two things for our project. First, we started our morning by going into Bow to get our mode of transportation (catherine's car) registered so we can continue our project. While we were at the town hall, we talked to the employees about what they do to keep the community clean. They talked to us about how today is trash day, and how it is so convenient to just leave your separated trash and recycling out in front of your house to be picked up. This took us about one hour. This definitely explains why the neighborhoods in Bow are so trash free! From 11 - 2, we walked the trail around Putney Pond, and we found a very small amount of trash, including a few plastic bottles, cans and some loose paper. We figured this was the case because the community around Putney Pond maintains a clean neighborhood, and keeps their local pond and trail clean too! We think that finding trails/bodies of water that are smaller and surrounded by a clean community will hold a common theme of le

Today was our first trash debut, we spent it walking around Kezar Lake 10:00 - 2:00 and took 30 minutes for lunch. Because today was our first day, it taught us a lot about what we can do to make our project more effective. We purchased trash bags, gloves, and two trash pick up sticks to help us. These were very helpful, especially the trash picker upers because we could reach into water or deep woods to grab our trash. The majority of our trash consisted of cans, bottles, and random scraps/papers. In the future, a vehicle such as a bike or scooter might help us to be more effective so that we can cover more area. Something we noticed, and predict to be a common theme is the lack of trash cans in the area. Today, we did not see a singular trash or recycle can, which was very disappointing to us. If there is no where for people to conveniently throw their trash away, it definitely will cause much more litter. After we got back to campus, we looked at a map and marked the most effective