As the course is coming to an end, our community based experiential learning (CBEL) project is in the process of being completed. Looking back on the last three months, our group gained a lot of knowledge on how waste reduction is important in building a more environmentally friendly society. For example, by reducing, we can save a significant amount of  resources and valuable space in the landfill (City of Vancouver, 2017).  However, we learned that recycling may not be the most effective approach as it has some negative environmental impacts. Transportation of cup waste contributes to greenhouse gases and global warming as transportation uses fuels and energy (Eisted et al., 2009). In this final blog, our group member would like to express our appreciation for the feedback and suggestions that our community partner, City of Vancouver and StudioCity, TA, and instructor provided. This course provided us with an incredible opportunity to connect with the real environment issue in Vancouver.

Here is the link of our project video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbw8H2pNU48

What?

A moment of significance

Now that we have completed our video, we were able to collect data to measure the effectiveness of the video by asking viewers to participate a survey. Our video was posted on social media (Facebook and Youtube) along with a link to our survey in the description box of the video. Our survey had 73 participants. Based on the results from the survey, we realized that our video provided some influence to 63% of the participants to decrease their usage of paper coffee cups. By looking through these results, we are excited to see how our project went well so far.

So what?

Significances

The creation of a video and survey are good channels of communication since they connected us with the audiences directly. We were able to collect quantitative data from our survey over the duration of two week. A survey was made because it allows for systematic interviewing which allows for questions that specifically targets our research (Sapsford, 2007). In addition, surveys enables standardizations by asking consistent questions (Sapsford, 2007). The participants were required to choose a single answer from the options given which result in precise answers to be further analysis (Sapsford, 2007).

After analyzing the result, we were glad that our video was effective because over half of the participants were concerned about this issue.

Now what?

Although our project may have not had a significant change in promoting the increase in overall reduction of single use paper cups, it is a step towards the reduction. We were happy to be able to collaborate with the City of Vancouver and CityStudio.

There several limitation that should be taken into account in future projects. For instance, we cannot measure behaviour change in person. In addition, the results do not reflect the effect of the our video for the people in Vancouver overall. This is due to the fact that non internet users and a large number were not taken into account. Further research must be considered to extrapolate the result the the entirety of Vancouver.

However, the data that was collected from our survey may be useful for the City of Vancouver. For instance, the survey can allow the City of Vancouver to pinpoint the area in Vancouver that uses the most single use cups. In addition, the survey can allow the City of Vancouver to know the method is most effective in to result in people using less single use paper cups. With this knowledge, the City of Vancouver may be able to better approach businesses to implement a strategy.

 

 

References

City of Vancouver (2017). Zero Waste Vancouver. Retrieved from http://vancouver.ca/green-vancouver/zero-waste-vancouver.aspx

Eisted, R., Larsen, A. W., & Christensen, T. H. (2009). Collection, transfer and transport of waste: Accounting of greenhouse gases and global warming contribution. Waste Management & Research, 27(8), 738-745. doi:10.1177/0734242X09347796

Sapsford, R. (2007). Survey research. London, CA: Sage Publications.

It has been a few week since our last post. In this post, we will update you on our weekly objectives and achievements. Since our project is coming to an end soon, we will be sharing a summary of our moments of significant change below. In addition, we have finalized our video and posted it on Youtube!

Feel free to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbw8H2pNU48&feature=youtu.be

Weekly Objectives:

By Nov. 5th

• Finish editing the video (add music, cut clips together, add important captions)

By Nov. 8th

• Communicate with community partners for feedback on completed video

By Nov. 9th

• Create a survey for data collection that will be linked in the description box of the Youtube video

By Nov. 10th

• Posting the video on the social media (Youtube and various Facebook pages) and begin collecting data

By Nov. 15th

• Start working on the infographic and final report

Achievements:

On Oct. 25th

• Met with community partners to discuss our video idea

On Oct. 29th

• Finished filming video scenes
  • Coffee cups falling out of locker
  • Multiple scenes showing how cups are consistently disposed of

What?

Moments of Significant Change Workshop:

During our Moment of Significant Change workshop, we created a graph showing our personal progression in knowledge and emotion from the start of term to now. The y-axis represented both knowledge and emotion while the x-axis represented progression of time. The red line represents emotion while the blue line represents knowledge. Some of our significant events included our community partner meetings, our proposal, and blog postings. As shown on the graph, the our knowledge increased with time, whereas our emotions tended to fluctuate throughout the term.

Our emotion was the highest when we had the first meeting with our community partners. We were excited to work with City Studio and the City of Vancouver and contribute to the community that cares about environmental sustainability. Our goal is to promote awareness of waste reduction. They gave us a lot of encouragement for this project. Next, we were required to write a blog. None of the members in our group had blog writing experience, so we struggled on the content and the writing style. When we got our blog mark back, our emotion dropped a lot. The next assignment was a proposal on our project (please see previous two blogs). Our emotion dropped to the lowest after we received a low mark and feedback for our proposal. We were confused about the direction of our project and how to achieve the goals and expectations. However, things were getting back on track after we had the second meeting with our community partners. They provided us with a more clear direction and feasible advice about our video. Therefore, our stress level decreased dramatically from then. We hope this positive flow of energy continues throughout the remaining term.

At first, we had limited knowledge as we were just starting the course. However, our knowledge continued to increase with time. Our knowledge increased dramatically after the proposal write up and the the greatest after the second meeting with the community partner.

So what?

Significance:

During our Moment of Significant change workshop, we were able to visually review what we have done and evaluate our performance throughout the term to make improvements in the future. We noticed that the majority of our significant emotions resulted from a struggle to understand the expectations of tasks, difficulties in communicating with group members and low grades on assignments. We noticed that all of these are instances of uncertainties. Although it was challenging and frustrating, it was important to overcome the uncertainty in all situations because it is inevitable. We reminded each other to embrace the problems with positive outlook. In addition, to cope with the uncertainty we were dealing with, we tried to focus on what we could control such as adjusting our group dynamic. We stressed the importance of focusing on our project goal because the end project might be valuable for future use. Although we did not realize at the time, these emotionally negative events actually result in a gain of knowledge. We believe that the uncertainty we experienced was a huge factor because comfortable situations does not require as much thought.

Now What?

Strategies for Successful Project Completion:

In order to successfully complete our Zero Waste project, our group will use a variety of strategies. Most importantly, we will continue to remind each other that any uncertainty that will occur should be handled with a positive outlook. For successful project completion, we will work on our group dynamics by cooperating with one another. We will assign tasks that correlate to the strengths of each member. We will do this by continuing to meet after tutorial every week to work on upcoming tasks. We will set up more times to meet with one another if our weekly objectives was not completed. Additionally, for divided tasks, we will check on each other to ensure that we are keeping up with deadlines. We plan to send our partners our video asking for feedback. We will send the email and video link early in order to use their feedback then make necessary adjustments. After the video feedback is received, we will make ourselves a detailed and feasible timeline. We will check this timeline regularly to ensure that we are staying on top of our schedule. We will then compile our research and data and start working on our final presentation, infographic, and final report. Finally our infographic will include significant findings and will be presented at the LFS final project showcase as well as the Hubbub event. We hope that our  project will provide data that can be incorporated into further waste reducing projects in our community.