Hello
We are a 6 membered team who passionately want to work with our community to reduce waste one take-out box at a time! We hope to improve our current system of packaging extra food.
Meet the Team!
Kelly Xu
Major: Food Market Analysis
Interests: My first memorable exposure to environmental studies, which sparked my growing interest in issues around sustainability and nutrition, was in my grade eight science class. It intrigued me to see our impact on the environment and the possible initiatives I could take locally to help build a greener city and world. Outside of school, I work part-time as a bank teller. One of the many responsibilities of my job is to advise customers on our products based on their day-to-day banking needs. From this experience, I learned the importance of consumer choice on business operations and I am excited to see how marketplace economics can educate people towards reducing waste collectively.
Michelle Yee
Major: Food Market Analysis
Interests: My interests in sustainability, nutrition, and marketing have developed from a number of experiences. Sustainability has always been an important value in my family. In addition, I participated in an outdoor education high school that had a major emphasis on sustainability; thus, I was greatly impacted and involved in sustainable activities. With regards to nutrition, I have more recently become interested in it because I found it plays a major role in my athletic performance as a varsity athlete. During my spare time out of academics and sport, I work for Vega, a plant-based nutrition company. I help market and demo their products at various stores and events.
Rachelle Duckworth
Major: Food, Nutrition and Health
Interests: Since high-school, I’ve developed an interest in nutrition, health, fitness and living a more sustainable lifestyle. Three years ago I learned that I could enhance personal health, as well as the health of our planet by making minor adjustments to my day-to-day habits. Since then, I’ve adopted a vegan diet, and have continued to make additional adjustments such as using reusable containers, taking short showers, reduce/eliminate the amount of time idling in my vehicle etc. Last summer, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work for the City of Kamloops EcoSmart team. This was a summer job that consisted of four environmentally-conscious students, with the main focus of educating the community on how to live a sustainable lifestyle by reducing the amount of energy, water, and waste they use and produce.
Selin Oguz
Major: Global Resource Systems
Interests: Within my program, I focus on environmental sustainability and international development, two topics that I believe should be deeply embedded within each other. I’m very interested in sustainable economic growth, hence why I chose to study these two topics within GRS. In my daily life, I always try to do my best to decrease my carbon footprint, recycle, and stick to sustainable habits, such as buying locally and consuming a vegetarian diet. I also work for the Naam Restaurant in Kitsilano, which is a job that I really enjoy and a business that I fully stand behind.
Simiao Wei
Major: Food Nutrition and Health
Interests: When I was very young, my grandmother went home to bring a container to pack my leftover noodles. We never spoke of sustainability because this seemed natural, like adding tea leaves to compost to make soil for our plants. Reduction was synonymous with frugality, which was essential in everyday life. So when recycling was popularized, it seemed more of a convenience compared to reducing our waste. As a nutrition-focused major, I believe that environmental health is a vital factor in nutritious food and a healthy food system.
Zuzana Sobotkova
Major: Food Nutrition and Health
Interests: My interest in sustainability long predates my learning of the term. Growing up I spent much time in the countryside where reducing waste and recycling were a matter of course. Today sustainability speaks to me on a much broader level. Although my academic focus is in nutrition and health, I believe it is important that both be approached with sustainable living practices in mind, as in the long term, the compounded effect of living sustainably benefits all aspects of our personal and collective being. Outside of my academic pursuits, I spend a fair amount of time volunteering within the community most frequently of late at one of the needle exchanges downtown, which is part of a harm reduction program that coincides with my beliefs of sustainable practices in disease prevention.
Our Goals and Interests
Our team has common passions towards nutrition and environmental sustainability. Although our experiences with projects involving these subjects are quite diverse from each other, we all have similar goals and values regarding community, wellness, and the importance of environmental health.
We chose this specific project because we believe that having the opportunity to work with the City of Vancouver is an amazing way for all of us to make our voices heard within our community, to share our passions and goals about waste reduction, and strive for the change that we wish to see regarding this issue. By the end of our experience with LFS 350 and the “Put Waste in its Place” project, we wish to understand the potential challenges in making changes in our community as a team. Likewise, we hope that our experience with our project will further expand our knowledge on how to address current community issues.
Who will we be working with?
Throughout our project, we will be working with Ileana Costrut from CityStudio Vancouver and Paul Gagnon from the City of Vancouver. Ileana is a CityStudio Projects Coordinator who has been bringing together the City of Vancouver staff with students and faculty of various Vancouver colleges and universities to test out experimental projects since 2011. Paul Gagnon is the Corporate Zero Waste Officer for the city of Vancouver. He has achieved an 86% waste diversion from the landfills from 600 municipal buildings within the city in the past six years. Both CityStudio and the City of Vancouver are collaborating on ‘The Greenest City Action Plan’ by working on sustainable and innovative plans within communities. In particular, CityStudio gets students involved with city staff and the community to “co-create solutions” for some complex and important issues in Vancouver (CityStudio Vancouver, 2018).
Our Project Objective
Our project objective is to address the overuse of single-use containers -particularly at restaurants for take-out. Single-use items are often thought as acceptable as long as they are recycled. However, recycling is not as cost and energy efficient as simply reducing single-use waste, and thus we believe our project can decrease the use of single-use containers by helping to normalize bringing reusable containers in restaurants (take out and packing extra food).
Project Goals:
- Identify ways to increase reusable container use
- Develop a campaign promoting reusable containers
- Establish the importance of waste reduction amongst diners
- Address current barriers and motivators of reusable container use
Our First Impressions of the Process to Date
Our first impression of the “Put Waste in Its Place” project is that it provides a fresh perspective on sustainability. In Vancouver, we value a sustainable future which began with recycling papers, hard plastics and most recently organic waste. Now, Vancouver’s Greenest City plan to become a ‘zero waste’ city stresses reducing and reusing as “even more important for a zero waste society than recycling” (Greenest City 2020 Action Plan). We are excited to make the reduction of waste the priority in the project.
Our first meeting with Ileana and Paul has added to our passions for sustainability, as they were open to a variety of approaches (research or action based) towards the project. They reassured us that the creativity of students is more than welcomed and that we should not be afraid of project failures. Ileana gave us an example of a previous community project, 2013’s bike repair stations, that did not work out as planned and explained the positive learning aspects that came from projects like this.
“Building communities from the inside out”
Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993
Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) focuses on combining community strengths and utilizing them to restore the gap between local food insecurity and food injustice. The ABCD foundation is built on principles involving the inclusiveness and contributions of each individual of the community.
“Put Waste in Its Place’’ allows us to recognize our ecological influences on the environment and practice our own role in leadership towards a more sustainable and equitable food system within our community. Paul and Ileana have been incredibly supportive and responsive to our potential ideas to engage the city towards the common goal of reduction. They have given us the flexibility to plan the project which reminds us of one of the many visions of ABCD – the distribution of leadership and with its movement can all citizens have the autonomy to access assets which lead to sustainable livelihoods (Mathie and Cunningham, 2003). The relationships within a community can be strengthened by the share of knowledge and active listening between locals where both strategies are greatly emphasized in Ernest Siroli’s TED talk (2012).
Parallel to Siroli’s idea on the collaborative effort for success, we are beyond ecstatic to take part in this community-based project and hope to see the positive change along with the participation of society.
References:
City of Vancouver. (2012). Greenest city 2020 action plan (2011-2014). Retrieved from: vancouver.ca
Kretzmann, J. P., & McKnight, J. L. (1993). Building Communities from the Inside Out. Chicago, IL: ACTA Publications.
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). Want to help someone? Shut up and listen! [TEDxEQChCh]. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_ someone_shut_up_and_listen/transcript?language=en
What We Do. (n.d.). Retrieved from: www.citystudiovancouver.com
