THE PLASTIC-WASTE PROBLEM
AND HOW WE STARTED
In 2018, Bridgewater College stopped recycling plastic. A major reason was that other countries stopped buying the enormous amount of plastic that the United States produces every year, month, day. Thus, the only way that Americans could get rid of their plastic was by dumping them into the environment.
The concern about what happens to the wasted plastic and its impact on the environment has been on the mind of many Bridgewater students and staff members since then. Every year, the massive amount of plastic dumped into the ocean not only releases toxics into the water but also harms all marine life. Plastic buried under landfills takes years to dispose, while the rate of plastic waste has long overwhelmed the planet’s capacity to carry and heal on its own. College students have long learned about plastic issues since they were young, yet solutions remain scant.
Our team consists of members that were alarmed by the sudden loss of recycling options on campus and concerned about its implications on our planet. When Joan, our leader, saw the Showker Prize competition poster, she instinctively knew that she would participate to solve the plastic waste question in Bridgewater College. She quickly found three other senior students - Sophie, Anh, and Eli - who had all grown impatient with the lack of action to respond to the environment crisis, both on campus and in the world. The environmental concern is global; soon enough, the team welcomed Rashed, a freshman from the Gaza Strip in Palestine. He acutely pointed out that Bridgewater’s issue was not insufficient recycling but the overuse of single-use plastic.
The team concurred that recycled plastic in previous years were simply shipped from one part of the world to another, while the root cause - our unsustainable habits - was left condoned. Thus, together, the five students chose the name NetZero Plastic to express their mission to reduce the use of single-use plastic on campus, focusing on the community’s awareness and changes in lifestyles. We hoped that these changes would not only pertain to Bridgewater College in the year 2019-2020 but will result in permanent changes in the lifestyle and mindset of Bridgewater students and staff, who would eventually become a mini-agent of change in their own communities.
Watch how we frame the issue of plastic waste and our proposed solutions here! Do you want to know how much consideration and effort we put in our pitch?
Originally, our team appointed Eli and Sophie, the two confident “veterans” in public speaking and persuasion to deliver the pitch. Not only because they are experienced, this one-guy-one-girl team also shows our considerations for gender representation and balance.
So why do you see two guys here? It is because our team cares not only about the end result but also how each member can grow from the project. Sophie decided to step down so that our youngest and non-English-native-speaker member, Rashed, could challenge himself with delivering this important pitch! The discussion about this decision was short-lived, as we quickly all agree that we prioritize members’ growth over a small representation occasion.
To ensure the quality of our pitch, we entrusted Eli, our communication major and the king of improv and public speaking, with backing Rashed up. On the other hand, Rashed worked closely with Sophie, Anh, and Joan in many coaching and practice sessions to improve his scripts, style, tone, and nonverbal cues.
Finally, after delivering the pitch, we decided that rather than only two members, the whole team would receive questions and feedback from the judges. This was an invaluable experience that highlights our team culture - NetZero Plastic cares about each team member and our growth together.
OUR STRUGGLES
As a team, we ran into several road blocks throughout our project. Even still, we managed to adapt to and overcome many of these.
Our team started with three big ideas. The first includes installing a water-filling station in a residential hall to reduce the need to use single-use plastic in daily life. Although almost every single academic building already has a water-filling station, we could install the first one in a residential hall. The second idea involves combining a meditative labyrinth and ecobricks built with plastic bottles. The last one was to build a gigantic, 10 foot tall, globe-shape sculpture with the amount of plastic we collected on campus to demonstrate the amount of plastic Bridgewater College residents produced and to send a message of love to the earth. We learned after consultation with Professor Teshome, who directs the Office of Sustainability, that the school already had plans to install new water filling stations, so we decided to do something that would be more unique to us, and so we decided on a sculpture. After many talks with art professors, our globe changed into a fish, sending a stronger message about plastic’s harm to marine species.
We then worked extensively with the Student Life Department, Grounds and Facilities, and Dr. Frueh to find the perfect area for our sculpture: in front of the Center for Engaged Learning, which houses the Office of Sustainability and is fitting for the theme of our project.
To couple with this sculpture, the team also decided to advocate through social media and tabling events through the spring semester. Together, we hope to reduce single-plastic use in the living habit of everyone on Bridgewater campus, abiding our own name- NetZero Plastic.
Another big struggle we faced was our plastic collection. Again, this required some collaboration with the Office of Sustainability to get our bins for plastic collection. We needed permission from Student Life to put them in all common areas, and we also had to consult with the directors of all academic buildings and the Funkhouser Center in order to have bins in nearly every building on campus. In addition to this, we needed to reach out to custodial services to inform them that the plastic in our bins was not to be thrown away. This was a big misunderstanding, because there is no official recycling of plastic done in the town of Bridgewater, so they had previously been instructed to dispose of plastic if it is put in recycling bins. Whenever we made our rounds, we made sure to speak directly to the custodial staff and tell them about our project so they knew about our bins. At one point, we actually had two of our bins taken by students, and we had to go through Residential Life in order to retrieve them. Despite the amount of work and problems we faced through this project, it was well worth it. We collected quite a bit of plastic- enough to nearly fill the garage in the house of Anh, Joan, and Sophie!
Despite our struggles, we learned a lot from our time as a Showker Prize team. We developed skills in leadership. For example, we learned efficient ways to conduct meetings, do team bonding exercises, and improved our interpersonal communication. Each member of our team learned new skills in technology, web design, and public speaking. Most importantly, we learned how to work together as a team in an extended, year-long project. We have picked up on how to support each other to maximize our strengths and complement our weaknesses.
IMPACT OF COVID-19
Background:
Of course, one of the largest struggles we faced as a team was Bridgewater College’s shutdown on March 11 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of the shut down, team NetZero Plastic was unable to complete the construction of our sculpture, which was the cornerstone of our project. We had planned to work with Professor Hough from the Art Department to create the sculpture on March 13, just two days after the shutdown was announced. Once the sculpture was completed, we intended to move it to its permanent location outside of the Center for Engaged Learning, where we hoped to leave it on display for many years to come. The sculpture would have then been filled with the plastic our team collected from around campus. This would have showcased just how many single use plastics the Bridgewater Community uses, it would have served as motivation to progressively eliminate the use of such plastics on our campus.
In addition to preventing our team from creating the sculpture, the shutdown also interrupted our plans for the awareness campaign we were running. We had set up two tabling events--one on March 12 and the other on March 27--outside of the Main Dining Hall. These tabling events were designed to serve two purposes, the first and most important of which involved providing members of the Bridgewater community with sustainable alternatives to single use plastics. Our team had purchased a large number of reusable shopping bags and intended to hand them out to whoever passed by our table. The second purpose of the tabling events was to gain data on the Bridgewater community’s current use of single use plastics. We planned on accomplishing this by asking passersby to complete a quick, 5-question survey in exchange for a reusable bag. We had also created more freebies to give away, including stickers designed by team member Anh Nguyen and notecards designed by team members Joan Lee and Sophie Hargrave.
How We Adapted:
Despite these setbacks and disruptions, team NetZero Plastic was not dissuaded by the shutdown to give up on our project. We decided to go ahead with our original plan to hold a tabling event on March 12 since students did not have to leave campus until March 13. However, instead of only using half of our supplies and saving the other half for the second tabling event on March 27, we decided to use all the supplies at this tabling event in case the then temporary shutdown became permanent. The event was very successful; our team handed out all the reusable shopping bags and received plenty of survey responses. The data from this survey can be found on the Achievements page of our website. Although it didn’t go exactly how we intended, our team was glad to be able to complete the awareness campaign portion of our project before leaving campus. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for our sculpture. With our team being scattered and with no way to access our resources on campus, we had to let go of our plans for the sculpture. However, we are determined to make sure that our plastic collection efforts were not in vain. Our team has been in touch with Bridgewater College administrators, and once we receive permission, we intend on removing the plastic from campus and taking it to the nearest recycling plant.
What We Learned:
The situation caused by Covid-19 changed how the members of NetZero Plastic will think about the future projects we work on. For example, this experience has instilled in us the value of flexibility and resilience. After our team heard the news of Bridgewater College’s shutdown, we regrouped, reevaluated, and revised our plans for our Showker Prize project. This ability to adapt to unexpected changes and obstacles is crucial to any project and is exactly what employers are looking for. In a workplace environment, any number of events could happen to alter the trajectory of a project. However, the task at hand must still be accomplished, and employers want people who can make the necessary changes and see the task through. Team NetZero Plastic believes we have demonstrated our ability to do so through our determination to roll with the punches and complete our project to the best of our ability.
Additionally, this situation reinforced for us how important it is to start working on projects early. If our team had not begun working on our awareness campaign in early January, we would have been in no position to finish out the campaign with only a moment’s notice. We would have been unable to provide the Bridgewater community with reusable plastic bags, and we wouldn’t have collected any data through our survey. Because of our head start on campaigning for the elimination of single use plastics, we were able to have an effect on Bridgewater College’s campus before the shutdown happened. When discussing this project with future employers, we will be able to describe how we took initiative as a team, started the work as soon as possible, and were able to succeed because of that initiative.