Week 2 Reflection

 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 the dump, but that she brings all the old stuff that people don't want to a consignment store for it to get reused.Muffy also has composted for many years and has a chicken coop in her backyard. We talked to her about her experience with composting, why she does it, and what are common things that can confuse people about it? Her responses helped with making our flier about composting that we can show to the public, so it is not so confusing to other people. 

Our second interview was with Ron, at the top of Mt. Kersarge in the fire tower. We first talked to Ron about his background and how he has seen the earth change throughout his life. We talked with him about global warming and the effect it has on the amount of fires. He has seen the fires increase in number and width before his eyes throughout his life. He also talked about the wind and how it blows trash into one direction off the top of the mountain, and how it gets stuck in trees and such. He said that August was probably the month where the mountain is most dirty. This was helpful to our overall understanding of sustainability, and also gave us a tip on where we can find more trash when we are cleaning up. 

Our last interview was with Mark. He worked for a recycling company out of Telluride, Colorado called Sunshine Recycling, and his job for them was to create a business 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. He explained his business plan that he proposed for them, which is to recycle with the goal to refuel instead of remake. This made us realize that cleaning up trash will not only make our earth cleaner, it will keep us and animals healthy, and it can be used in a more efficient way. This interview taught us a lot about our overall project.

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