The past few weeks have been fairly busy.  A lot has been completed, including the collection of bottles, building the mini-gardens, and putting together the poster presentation.  Each task is discussed in their respective sections below:

Bottle Collection

To promote the bottle drive, we posted additional posters around campus to spread the word on our project.  In addition, we made a class announcement in one of our Civil Engineering classes to remind our classmates of the bottle drives happening in Kaiser and Gage.

Bottle drive at Kaiser.

On the day of our first bottle drive at Kaiser, we did not receive many bottles.  As we found that continuing to just collect bottles was not going to satisfy our goal, we quickly decided to collect bottles as well as donations in return for a cookie.  More people were inclined to give donations as very few of them were in possession of 2L pop bottles.  This continued on to our bottle drive at Gage.  More people were informed of this event and many people showed up with bottles and donations.  We received a lot of support from our classmates as well as other students around campus.  In addition to collecting bottles through the bottle drive, we also collected a huge amount of bottles from our family and friends.

Drawing the template on the collected bottles at the Gage booth.

Our bottle collection was a huge success!  In total, we collected 125 bottles and $100 in donations (equivalent to 500 bottles)!  As requested, we drew the template on each bottle.  All of the bottles and donations were delivered to Ray-Cam and Warren was very impressed with our contributions to the food wall.  The remaining bottles will be purchased to meet the final count of 2500.

Delivering bottles at Ray-Cam.

The wall is currently being built and is awaiting the installation of bottles.  Warren has asked us to participate in attaching the bottles to the food wall.  We are going to help out on the morning of March  24.

Mini-Gardens

Besides the bottle drive, we were busy at work with our own miniature garden designs.  Each design is described below:

Tennis Ball Garden

Old tennis balls can be cut and attached to suction cups, which can then be used as small plant holders.  They can easily be stuck on windows or placed on counter tops.

Coffee Cup Garden

Coffee cups can be used to hang plants upside down in various places.  This takes up very little space as they are hung in open areas, which allows for easy access.

Light Bulb Garden

Light bulbs have little use once they have burned out.  However, they can be used as very vases for small plants after the light bulb filament is removed.

Beer Can Garden

Besides recycling, cans could be constructed into unique structures that hold small plants.  They can be arranged in numerous fashions and can be placed in various places.

Poster Presentation

Our group is currently working on the poster for the presentation.  All the text has been printed out and we are just in need of posting everything onto the poster board.  We will be meeting before the presentation on Monday to put the finishing touches on the poster and our presentation.

Working on the poster.

We are very excited about reaching the end of our project!

In the past three weeks, our team has  taken action for the Vertical Food Wall Project.  From Reading Break up until now, we have been fairly busy with the plant list for the food wall, the organization of bottle collecting events, and the design of miniature garden structures.

During Reading Break, we each came up with our own individual plant list, which was then compiled into one master list.  The compiled list was emailed to Judy for review.  A few of the included plants are listed below in their respective seasons:

• Spring/Summer:  Cabbage, cucumber, broccoli, bok choy

• Winter Thriving:  Lettuce, Kai-Lan, parsnips, brussel sprouts, kale

The three main tasks left to complete are the collection of 2L bottles, design and construction of miniature gardens, and the final poster presentation.  The progress of each are described below:

Bottle Collection

We have contacted various local businesses and residences about our bottle collection but have been denied by many.  However, we managed to book a stand in the Kaiser atrium on March 13 from 11 AM to 2 PM to help spread the word of the food wall and collect pop bottles from students and staff.  We will have multiple shifts for manning the booth to accommodate our busy schedules.  In addition, we have contacted Gage residence to see if we can hold a bottle collection booth for one night.  We have yet to receive confirmation of this event, but the target date is March 14 from 3 PM to 6 PM.  For these two events, we plan on baking cookies and exchanging them for 2L pop bottles.  Hopefully this will give people an incentive to bring in their empty bottles.

We have put together a couple of posters to put around campus, mainly in the engineering buildings.  One of our posters are shown below.  In addition to these, we are going to advertise our project in our classes to raise awareness of this project to encourage people to collect and donate their bottles.  We have set up two boxes in the Civil Design Studio and are planning to implement more boxes around the buildings for convenience.

Bottle Collection Poster

As of now, we have collected 51 bottles.  The goal is to reach 2500 bottles by March 18, but as time is very limited, this goal is unrealistic at this point.  We have notified Sabine and Warren about this situation and have been told to just collect whatever we can.  One of our alternative solutions include collecting all types of bottles and trading them in for 2L bottles or raising money to help purchase the remaining bottles.

Mini-Garden

After researching various ways to plant fruits and vegetables, we came up with a few unique solutions that use common household items.  The idea behind these structures are to “Think Big, Grow Small.”  A few conceptual designs are provided below.  These designs are meant to be low cost and easy to construct.  We are planning to use various items like incandescent light bulbs, tennis balls and beer cans to create fun little gardens that can be placed in various places around the house.

Mini-Garden Concepts

Mini-Garden Concepts Cont’d.

We are planning to construct multiple mini-gardens.  The selected designs and the team member responsible for each are as follows:

• Beer bottle pyramid- Christopher
• Suction cup tennis ball  – Jasmine
• Upside down coffee tin – Megan

Peyman, Christina and Samuel will assist in collecting materials and building the mini-gardens.  We will continue to develop more concepts as we stumble upon more interesting ways to grow plants.  The mini-gardens are going to be due on March 18 so that we have everything sorted out for the final presentation.  Once completed, the miniature gardens will be given to Sabine to showcase to the community.

Poster Presentation

The final poster project will be started on the week of March 18, when all the bottles are supposedly due.  This way, we will have more time to focus on making the poster and preparing for our presentation.  We will need to purchase a poster board and paste incorporate visuals that help describe our project.  Everyone will help out with the final poster as we are presenting on March 25.

We are so excited!  We cannot wait to see how this all turns out!