We know it’s always sad to say Goodbyes, but time flies. Here is our last post, we would love to share our final decal design and observation results with you.

What?

After we got the feedback from our community partners, we modified our decal designs and in the late of March, we carried out our 2nd observation at the Kerrisdale Community Centre to test the effectiveness of our decals.  For the 2nd observation, we conducted 3 observation sessions on three different dates, March 17th(2:30-4pm), March 26th(2:30-3:30pm) and March 29th (1-3pm). For the 2nd observation, we not only collected the data on the accuracy of garbage sorting but also randomly interviewed five people who used the zero waste station and asked for their opinions towards our decal designs. During the 2nd observation, we sat at the same spot that we did for the 1st observation and observed for the speed and accuracy of garbage sorting. Since the staff told us that the busiest hour of the community center is around 3 pm during the first observation, we arranged our second observation to start somewhere around 3. Just like the first observation, sometimes it is hard to see the type of garbage that the person is throwing because our observation spot was a bit far away from the zero waste station, so we had to run over to the garbage bin after the person left and lift the lid to check if the person had sorted correctly. For the first observation session on Mar.17th, there were only five people using the zero waste station during observation period, so we had to schedule follow-up observation session in order to increase our sample size. In the first observation we observed 17 people, so this time we wanted to observe at least 15 people so we could compare the result to the first time. Therefore, we had two more observation sessions at the community center and finally increased our sample size to 16.

Figure 1. Modified Decal Designs

Figure 2. Observation Spot at Kerrisdale Community Centre

Figure 3. Decals on the Zero Waste Station
Results
Our moment of significance came after analyzing the raw data. The overall accuracy of waste sorting for the 2nd observation is 68.75% and the average sorting time is 2.7s. Although it is still well below the diversion rate of 79% presented by our community partner, it is much higher than the result of the first observation which is 59% and the average time used for sorting is  0.9s less than the first observation.

For the interviewing part, we asked the participants whether they have noticed the decals or not, and asked them to rate the effectiveness of the decals out of a score of 5 and lastly, we asked for their suggestion for improvements. From the five people we interviewed, they all noticed the decals on the garbage bin and they gave an average score of 4/5 for the effectiveness of the decal designs and most of the comments from the interviewees are positive. Due to the small sample size, we cannot draw any conclusions based on our findings. However, by comparing the data we obtained from the 1st observation and the 2nd observation, we see an increase in garbage sorting accuracy rate and also a reduction of sorting time; this might imply that our decals did help people to sort their wastes better. Also, the data and comments that we collected from the interviewing part also indicate that our decals are successful for their function.

Difficulties
Some difficulties that we encountered during the group work is that it is very hard to schedule the observation time that can fit everyone’s schedule. Sometimes the scheduled observation gets postponed due to lack of people available for the specific time period or sometimes something unexpected happens which leads to the unavailability of a member at the scheduled time. We wanted to have at least 3 members present at the observation session since we have 3 observation tables to fill out.

Another difficulty we encountered is that during the 2nd observation session on March 26th , the staff at the community center did not allow to put our decals on the zero waste station due to lack of the Kerrisdale Community Centre supervisor’s approval. Even though we had the permission from our community partner we still need to get the permission from the supervisor of the community center. Fortunately, after negotiating with the staff, she allowed us to do the observation but she informed us to get the permission from the supervisor for the next observation session.

Although our journey to achieve the final point of this project wasn’t a straight line, we alway kept in mind that “without a certain amount of anxiety and risk, there’s a limit to how much learning occurs (Shulman, 2005)”. We treated all the difficulties as our learning processes instead of barriers. As a group we bonded and made decisions together. As individuals, we learned to improve our communication skills and interpersonal skills.

So what?

By comparing the accuracy rate of the 1st and 2nd observation, we can see there is almost 10% increase in the accuracy rate and the average time people spending on garbage sorting decreased by 26% in relative to the average time of 1st observation. The numerical data based on observation implies that our decals did help people to sort garbage faster and more accurately. In order to know if the participants have actually noticed the decals and use the decals to help them sort out the garbage, we decided to interview 5 people randomly and ask for their thoughts on the decals.

As mentioned by Berry(1999), interviewing is a method for educational research and it is a key method for data collection. An unstructured interviewing helps researchers to elicit information in order to achieve a holistic understanding of the interviewee’s point of view(Berry, 1999). Since our purpose is to help the people in the community center to perceive the meaning of our decals and to make the right sorting decision, their views of the decals are especially important to us for further modifications.  Since individuals vary in their ability to articulate thoughts and ideas(Berry, 1999), we constructed 3 straight forward questions to ask the interviewees. The three questions are “did you notice the decal?”, “how much did the decals help you out of a score of 5” and “do you have any suggestions for improvement”. Predictably, all interviewees noticed the decals and the average score for the decals on effectiveness is 4 out of 5. However, one interviewee gives a score of 1 out of 5 for the effectiveness and he suggests us to have other languages printed on the decals because non-English speakers might not be able to recognize the difference among the decals. His suggestion is worth thinking because Vancouver is home to 913,300 immigrants and they account for 40% of Vancouver’s total population; and among the immigrants, Chinese, Indian and Filipino are the largest immigrant groups in Vancouver.(Statistics Canada, 2016) Therefore, adding a second language for the decals might be a great idea to help the immigrants to sort wastes correctly. The other four interviewees all provided positive comments for our decals as they think our decals are easy to follow and understand.

Another thing we noticed is that among the 5 times people sorted incorrectly, 4 of them are associated with paper items and this is very similar to the outcome of the 1st observation. In the 1st observation, there were 7 people in total that sorted the garbage incorrectly and 6 of them are related to paper items. People seem to be confused with sorting paper items even after we modified our decals and this might be due to that they think the paper items should go to the landfill bin instead of the mixed paper bin. This observation suggests that we can put up a stop sign with paper items on the landfill bin in order to raise people’s awareness of paper waste sorting.

In the 2nd observation session, the staff in the community center did not allow us to observe at first because we do not have the permission from the community center supervisor. From this incident, we learned that it is our responsibility to think of all potential obstacles that we might encounter during the observation session and we should do the best preparation in order to prevent any misunderstanding between us and our community partner.

Now What?

Due to the high rate of inaccuracy with sorting paper items, a special sign on the landfill decal might be needed to prevent people from throwing paper items into the landfill bin. Although Our decals seem to be successful and effective in comparison to the result from the 1st observation, the small sample size is a limitation for us to determine the effectiveness of our decals and we think the result would be more convincing if the sample size is larger.

All good things come to an end. We are very thankful to City of Vancouver and CityStudio for the opportunity to collaborate on such an interesting project. While our data is was limited and our findings even more so, it opened our minds to the possibility of real change in the community and maybe even the world. The project may be finished, but we will not forget what we learned about waste management and will continue to seek ways to contribute to zero waste community in Vancouver in 2020 . Last but not least, thank you, Jeanie Morton and Paul Gagnon for all your help, we couldn’t have done it without you guys.

Reference:

Berry, R. S. (1999, September 28). Collecting data by in-depth interviewing. Retrieved April 02, 2017, from http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/documents/000001172.htm

Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18–25. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ697350.pdf

Statistics Canada. (2016, September 15). Immigration and Ethnocultural Diversity in Canada. Retrieved April 02, 2017, from http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-010-x2011001-eng.cfm

According to Shulman (2005), without a certain amount of anxiety and risk, there’s a limit to how much learning occurs. Our team is learning from our mistakes, carrying on our works, and making a positive impact in our community.

Weekly Objectives

It’s the second week of March, which means there’s only one month left in this semester. How time flies! Hopefully, everyone is not too stressed by all the upcoming due dates.

This week, our main objective is to modify our decal designs based on our community partners’ feedback. We plan to combine our group members’ ideas into one, that is, to use a simple design with the same colour theme as the bins; for bins that are frequently misused, we will use a cross-out sign that tells what items should not go into that bin. As soon as the modification is done, we will go to Kerrisdale Community Centre again, where we will implement and test out our newly designed decals. Subsequently, we can conduct our second round of observation and data collection at the waste stations to see if there’s a difference in diversion rate. Also, we will make sure that our second observation takes place at the community centre’s busy hours, that is, 3-5 PM, in order to maximize our sample size.

Figure 1. Our decal re-design so far

Achievements to date

So far, our group has conducted our first round of observation and data collection at Kerrisdale community centre. Our main findings were that the actual diversion rate (60%) is lower than the average (79% as presented by our community partner Paul), mixed papers are often sorted incorrectly, and that children are more likely to sort wastes properly. Through this observation, we now understand that some items are more commonly mis-sorted than others, and that age plays a factor in sorting ability. For our first decal designs, we divided our group, which consists of six members, into three pairs, so we can present three different styles of decal designs to our community partners. During our second meeting with our community partners, we informed them on our observation findings and presented to them our decal designs. We discussed what each design did well at and how we can combine the three different ideas into one. This meeting combined with our observations informed our new decal designs where we are using simple black and white waste item drawings, with a border that coordinates with the bin color, and most importantly has an X symbol for items that are commonly wrongly discarded in that particular bin. We are hoping this new design theme will address sorting deficiencies at our community center.

Moment of Significant Change workshop

Figure 2. Graph of Emotions and Knowledge/Skills

What?

In our last tutorial session we participated in the moment of significant change workshop. We were asked to draw two graphs: (1) our change in emotion and (2) our changes in knowledge/skills throughout the project and semester. We discussed the significant moments and used these as our x-axis (ex: our first community member meeting was one significant moment), we then each traced out lines that represented our level of mood and development of skills at each of these moments. The moment of significant change workshop This allowed us to discover the fluctuation of our group members’ emotions throughout the project and outlined how our skill levels in specific parts of the project are. Interestingly, our team members seemed to follow similar trends when it came to emotions but had somewhat more variation when it came to skill levels. Now that we have noted the differences in each other’s skill levels we can use this information to guide future parts of the project.

As seen in the graph above, our group had a general feeling of optimism from the start of the assignment, first meeting with the group, to the first meeting with our community partners. We were inspired by Mathie & Cunningham (2003)’s article, where they highlighted the important elements of Asset-Based Community Development: collecting a community’s past successes, analyzing the reasons for success, and working towards a better community. After learning about Asset-Based Community Development, we were all looking forward to making an impact in our community by improving waste sorting.  However, our emotions began to drop as we proceeded to writing the first blog post and it subsequently reached a low point upon receiving feedback from it. We were unsatisfied with the grade we received yet relieved that we can still make revisions to obtain a better final grade.

After our first observation, our group’s emotions began to diverge as we had different schedules and were affected by other classes, work, and extracurricular activities. An all-time low in emotions occurred when we had to write our proposal report for the project. We felt overwhelmed as our workload was getting heavy and at the same time we were confused by the unclear expectations.

So What?

As seen in the graph for skill/knowledge, our skill level for the first blog was below intermediate, but we expected to become better at it, which lead us to this blog post. by learning from our mistakes. We decided to assign a different member as the main editor each time for our revision and future blog posts. The editor is responsible for collecting the input from all members and organizing it into a formatted, coherent blog post. We find that this method is more effective than members working on random parts.

Like the first blog, we didn’t do well for our first submission of the proposal, and we all felt anxious since the proposal is worth a lot of marks. According to Hardford (2016)’s TED Talk, uncertainty and messes require more focus and attention, which has the potential to increase learning, creativity, and achievement. We decided to incorporate more research on CityStudio, the City of Vancouver, and other academic sources on waste sorting into our proposal. We also went through each part of the proposal together and discussed specific ways to improve. As a result of our collaborative effort, not only did we receive a higher mark for the second submission, but we also gained skills on proposal writing that will be useful for our future career as a food professional.

Figure 3. First edition of our decal designs

Another moment of change would be our second meeting with the community partners. As seen in our skill graph, all of us began with very limited skill with decal designing at the beginning of the project. As a result, none of us felt confident about our decal designs, and we were all nervous before presenting them to our community partners at the meeting. Undoubtedly, things do not always go as planned, just like Dan Barber’s failed attempts to replicate Sousa Eduard’s program of making foie gras (Glass, 2011). Before the meeting, none of us felt confident about our decal designs, but However, after hearing feedback and receiving the required images from our community partners, we all had a clearer outline of what to do in the future in mind. As a result, we are expecting to have a higher skill level for our new in decal designs. The lines behind the dotted vertical line on the graph are future projections or our feelings about the success of the project. All in all, we are feeling positive about what’s to come and are confident about the finish of the project.

Now What?

The Graceful Dismount: Our strategy for successful project completion

Our project will be complete when we give an official report on our findings and make suggestions for future improvements of the zero waste stations, supported with data and research. The dismount will involve stepping back, analyzing our findings, and connecting them to our goal of achieving a higher diversion rate. So far, our group work has been smooth and effective. Based on our personal moments of change, we have collectively designed strategies for a successful project completion.

As always, we will continue to keep our timeline goals. Importantly, we should ensure to have good communication within our groups, with our community partners, and with our TA so everyone remains on the same page and is not confused or uninformed about how the project is going. Having all team members to meet up outside class sessions is difficult but valuable for our progress, so we have agreed that for every task in the future, we will set up a meeting to exchange ideas and finalize our work before it is due.

Our main communication tool is our Facebook group, which has proven to be effective by allowing us to share project materials and ask questions. We will continue to use this method, but perhaps with more frequent postings and active response.

We also believe that in order to write an inspiring and comprehensive report, we should constantly ask for feedback and ideas from our community partners, our teaching team, and possibly from the other Put Waste in its Place group.

We hope that by utilizing these strategies we can fulfill the expectations of our group members and our community partners, and at the same time make a positive impact on the sustainability of our community!

Stay tuned for our final blog post of our quest to divert waste!

Reference

Glass, I. (Producer). (2011, December 2). Poultry Slam 2011: Act 3: Latin Liver. [Audio Poscast]. Retrieved from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/452/poultry-slam-2011?act=3#play

Harford, T. (2016, January 17). How messy problems can inspire creativity|| Ted Talks 2016. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd_j_kw_jZQ

Shulman, L. S. (2005). Pedagogies of uncertainty. Liberal Education, 91(2), 18–25. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ697350.pdf

What has been done so far (achievements to date)?

✔Completed our project proposal

✔Conducted our first observation at Kerrisdale community center on February 10th

✔Had second meeting with our community partners

• discussed decal designs and findings so far from this project

Objectives for this week

• Meet with our community partners to discuss findings and get feedback to improve our decal designs.
• Discuss findings from the data collected as a group so that everyone in the group will be on the same page.
• Modify decal designs prior to their implementation.
• Plan for the next data collection (who is going and on what day)

What?

It is the 4th week of February. That means midterms…are you happy (to be done) or sad (not to do well)? Well, let’s not think about our individual accomplishments for now and look instead at what we had done collectively as a group.

Our story started on Fri

day February 10, 2017 when three members of our team went into the Kerrisdale community center. When we arrived at the community center, it was nearly empty inside at 1PM so that we decided to conduct the second-round observation from a quarter to 3PM as we have heard from a community staff that their busiest hour is around 3PM. Since it was such a small community center and only a few zero waste stations’ users out there, we watched out for two different zero waste stations to increase the sample size. Although our tasks seemed simple, it was challenging to observe what people di

scard while remaining inconspicuous because we had to sit somewhere in the middle of the both stations in order to observe the two different garbage stations (it was hard to see). In fact, we had to go closer to the bins and opened the lids to see what people put into bins.

*Kerrisdale Community Center

Our moment of significance came after analyzing the raw data. The correctness for female and male is 60 percent and 57 percent, respectively when it comes to sorting waste accuracy. This is well below the diversion rate of 79 percent presented by our community partners. To our surprise, kids had the highest average of correctness (67 percent) while seniors had the lowest rate (50 percent); however, our sample size is extremely small: 3 kids, 8 adults, and 6 seniors. As a result, we cannot draw any conclusion with this small sample size. Another thing we noticed is that people are less likely to sort mixed paper items correctly. This implies that people are often confused when dealing with paper items or perhaps they assume that paper typically goes into garbage instead of mixed paper. We hope that we can find a reasonable answer for the result by analyzing the data more carefully.

So What?

Our initial observation findings at Kerrisdale Community Center revealed that the community center users are not performing particularly well in terms of waste sorting activities, represented by approximately 60 percent accuracy in sorting waste regardless of their gender. This implies good and bad because at present, people are not well informed of what goes into what bin but at the same time, it is a sign that there is a lot of room for improvement, which we hope we can help with using our decals. Thus, we probably should make it clearer that what goes into mixed paper bin and garbage bin when designing and modifying our decals before introducing.

As discussed above, people seem to be confused with paper items, such as paper, paper towel, scrap paper, and tissue. This could be explained by the fact that even same types of paper go into different waste bins depending on the condition of an item: clean or dirty and dry or wet. We believe that this is fairly upsetting for most people and we would probably need to tackle this to increase diversion rate.

If we break it down into different age groups, it shows that children did well relative to adult and senior groups. Yet again we have to note that the sample size is quite small. However, it is promising to raise awareness of sustainability to any further if that is truly the case because younger generations are the ones grow up with more knowledge about sustainability or at least they are more exposed to the idea of sustainability and later on educate future generations. Ron Finley articulates “To change the community, you have to change the composition of soil” (Ted Talk, 2013). The kids are the primary soil that will nurture the future crops and he echoes the idea that educating children will change their community. The behavior of children at Kerrisdale Community Center perhaps reflects the effort of current educational system in Vancouver. We expect that younger generation will even perform better to achieve sustainable lifestyle if they become familiarized themselves with zero waste stations and other sustainability promoting programs.

Now What?

Although the demographic statistics (gender, age, race) in our research does not reveal anything significant at this moment, we plan to continue collecting these information for our second observation, hoping that there might be some coloration between these attributes and waste management activities to identify certain groups of people who struggle the most for waste disposal. Thus, we can recreate decal designs, more specifically targeted to the group we identified.

Upcoming objectives and strategies to achieve them

1. Analyze the data obtained from our initial observation as a group to make any improvement in our decals that target people struggling the most in terms of waste management behavior. We collaborate with the other zero-waste project group to exchange ideas and findings to come up with more efficient decal designs. Come up with ways to improve observations as it was relatively hard to identify what was being sorted for some items.
2. Redesign our decals based on the feedback from our community partners and then print it off the decal designs to tape to the bins in the Kerrisdale Community Center to test out how they work.
3. Come up with ways to improve observation procedures as it was relatively hard to identify what was being sorted for some items while not approaching to the zero waste stations (it was suspicious to some extent).
4. Conduct 2nd observation at Kerrisdale Community Center. To keep things consistent, we will be using the same observation methods as our first visit but we will do it in a different time frame to maximize our sample size because their busiest hour is 3-5PM. Also, we will informally approach people in the center to ask them their thoughts about the decal and the zero-waste station to gain additional feedback.

Reference

TED Talks. (2013, March 6). Ron Finley: A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA. Retrieved

from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzZzZ_qpZ4w

“Zero waste—diverting waste from the landfill— is critical to solving today’s climate crisis”  — City of Vancouver 

Hello and welcome to our very first blog post!

Introductions

We are Group 18 in the course LFS 350, working on the Zero Waste Project with CityStudio and City of Vancouver. Although we are a group of students in diverse areas of study in LFS, we have shared interests in sustainability and waste reduction/management.

Emily:

Hello! I’m Emily Liu and I am studying Applied Biology, Food and Environment major in LFS. I am particularly interested in sustainability and the ways that we can manage it. Outside of academics, I enjoy exploring the outdoors and keeping active. Waste reduction is something that I want to work on and learn more about.This is because I think that it is an essential component in improving sustainable communities. I would like to learn about the methods in which I can decrease my own personal waste, as well as how it can contribute to increasing diversion rates away from landfills on a grand scheme. Furthermore, this relates to the goals of our project, where we are working on creating easier methods for the public in regards to sorting waste.

Jun:

Hi I am Jun Kamimura and I am in Food Market Analysis major. As my major kind of speaks by itself, I am interested in marketing especially about food related marketing including digital marketing using social media such as twitter, facebook, and instagram etc. Also I recently became into data analysis (using all the data including sales volume, sales location, sales month, and/or item types) to find out trends and a potential of markets. Aside from academics, I love playing basketball, playing saxophone (beginner), and reading novels. Marketing is quite relevant to behavioral economics in which it tries to reveal psychological insights into human behaviors to explain their decision-making. I am looking forward to get some ideas of how people think and act in the context of waste disposal activities out of this project.

Karyssa:

Hey everyone! I’m Karyssa Arnett and I study Marine Science and Conservation in the Global Resource Systems program (a mouthful I know). Although my major doesn’t tie directly into food systems other than fishing and seafood consumption, I am passionate about learning all-around sustainability, especially within the food system. I am passionate about all things ocean and I love to travel! In fact, I recently got back from a year study abroad in Sydney, Australia. I aim to minimize my environmental impact in my everyday actions and am excited to help make it easier for people within Vancouver to do the same by sorting their waste properly.

Beixi:

Hi, I’m Beixi Wang(the one in green jacket in the photo) and I am currently in the nutritional science program. As a member of the zero waste project, I am very interested in learning the world’s problems that we are facing right now and how we can connect what we learn in the school to the outside world to come up with solutions. I am very happy and excited to work with my group members and to discuss about sustainable ideas that can benefit our beautiful city.

Julia:

Hi everyone! My name is Julia Chen ,and I am majoring in Food Nutrition and Health major. As a future prospective professional in nutrition field. I believe a clean environment is essential for our healthy well-being, and sorting our daily wastes is just as important as making healthy daily food choices. I really appreciate the chance to be a part of the Put Waste in its Place project along with City studio and the City of Vancouver and am able to put my efforts to make Vancouver, the world’s greenest city. As a foodie, I love to explore all kinds of delicious foods which also makes Vancouver, a city of yummy foods come from all over the world, my favourite city!

Kaylee

Hi I am Kaylee Zou and I am in the food science major. Like my group members, I am interested in sustainability and I am excited to be part of a project that increases public awareness in waste diversion. In UBC, I have taken a few courses related to environmental problems and I believe that everyone in our community can make a difference in achieving sustainability. My hobbies include dancing, hiking, and playing the piano. the Put Waste in its Place project. As a resident of Vancouver, I am confronted with waste stations everyday and at times I often find it confusing to sort some items properly. By participating in this project, I hope to incorporate my personal experience about waste sorting into designing decals that are more straightforward for the users. I’m amazed by the effort the City of Vancouver has devoted for urban sustainability and I truly believe that the implementation of the Greenest City Action Plan require the effort of not just decision makers but also residents and students like us. In my spare time, I enjoy dancing, hiking, and playing the piano.

Interests, Goals and Aspirations

We are interested in changing the public’s perspective on sorting waste. Our goal is to simplify the general public’s views and actions regarding waste sorting, and therefore generating higher diversion rates away from landfills. We chose to partake in this project because we are interested in creating a more sustainable city. In addition, we acknowledge that campaigns for zero waste at UBC campus are effective in the contribution of a more sustainable campus. Thus, we desire to follow in the steps of these campaigns and broaden it to a larger demographic. Throughout the course of the term, we hope to gain experience working with city members, making a real impact on waste management within Vancouver and being a part of the change to making Vancouver the world’s greenest city. Throughout the course of the term, we hope to gain the skills of transferring our passions into a real impact in the community. As we learn from “Sirolli’s talk” (2012), an e-lecture of this course, the key of approaching communities is “listening” and working with local people who want to grow to be a better person or build a better community for themselves. We believe the most efficient way for us to transfer our passion to make Vancouver the world’s greenest city to a real effect is cooperating with the city members and work in their interests. Our group prides itself on being motivated and engaged in living sustainably and with our prior experience of working within the community through various classes and volunteer work we believe this project will be both successful at meeting our goals and the goals of CityStudio.

Project Objectives and Community Organization

Organization: Vancouver City Studio

Objectives:

Our objective is to create and design decal ideas for zero waste stations located in the buildings of Vancouver. We will be focusing on Kerrisdale Community Center as our site for observations.

First Impressions

We met with our City Studio community members Jeanie Morton and Paul Gagnon on Monday afternoon and were delighted to meet the acquaintance of such inspiring and passionate people who would be guiding our projects over the next coming months. During our meeting with Jeanie and Paul they shared with us a student project called Keys To The Streets. This project provided pianos at various areas in Vancouver for the public to play. It began as a student project that lead to community inclusiveness and more pianos being installed by other individuals outside of the student organization. This is also a reflection of  Asset-Based Community Development, a different technique that steers away from the needs-based technique of community development (Mathie, 2003). Asset-Based Community Development focuses on social assets, such as a person’s achievements as well as relationships that function as essential community development qualities (Mathie, 2003). This exemplifies characteristics found in the Keys To The Streets project where it strengthens communities by highlighting social assets and communication among members of our community.

 After hearing this successful story, we are inspired to implement ABCD techniques to the Zero Waste project as a means to a more sustainable city. Jeanie and Paul shared their objectives for our input in their Zero Waste campaign which included creating three separate design themes/ideas for waste bin decals. One of which will be chosen to be placed on the waste sorting bins to promote better waste sorting within City owned buildings across Vancouver. Their goal is to keep waste diversion rates high while decreasing the cost of replacing broken back panels that give similar information by using small decals on the tops of the bins to indicate how to sort the waste. Our project will attempt to achieve these goals through creating appropriate decal designs for bins to keep waste sorting easy for the public and therefore diversion rates high even without the use of back panels for sorting information. We are excited to understand that our ideas will impact communities not just within Vancouver but shared to other communities around the world as well. 

Acknowledgments

Additionally, we would  like to thank Jeanie and Paul for taking the time to meet with us and sharing their expertise on the Zero Waste project. We are looking forward to working with both of you and the other Zero Waste LFS group this term.

Keep posted for blog updates on how our adventures in creating a zero waste city unfold!

References:

Mathie, A., & Cunningham, G. (2003). From clients to citizens: Asset-based community development as a strategy for community-driven development. Development in Practice, 13(5), 474-486. doi:10.1080/0961452032000125857

Sirolli, E. (2012, November 26). Retrieved February 04, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chXsLtHqfdM&feature=youtu.be

Vancouver, C. O. (n.d.). Zero Waste. Retrieved February 05, 2017, from http://vancouver.ca/green-vancouver/zero-waste.aspx

Continue reading →