Reflection on Guest Speaker (Mr. Yan):
When Mr. Yan, a trash worker, presented to us last week discussing the topic of recycling, many things were learned which included the items that could be recycled and the choice of recycled products. While my initial impression was that all items that could be recycled are taken to be recycled, Mr. Yan showed us differently when he quickly sorted out the items to recycle where plastics and some bottles weren’t even taken into consideration. This is due to the specific facilities for recycling in Shanghai where only certain types can be taken to be recycled at specific sites. Due to plastic having different temperatures of burning, the choice of products to be recycled is also limited. If they were mixed, it would cause plastics to be considered as other or even change the use of plastic from being recyclable to only be single use. Furthermore, I learned that single use plastics couldn’t be recycled and were more utilized for only one purpose. In this sense, I felt that our consumerist disposable society is failing in protecting our resources as we value convenience for trash that would affect the ecosystem. Essentially, from this my view changed from being someone that just thinks that recycling can resolve issues to someone that understands that not everything “recyclable” can be recycled. This essentially changes.my perspective on my consumerism actions where I aim to focus more on using reusable items rather than items for convenience e.g. mugs rather than single use cups.
Reflection on Reading (Plastic: A Love Story):
With reference to the reading, I feel that it provided me a very good understanding of how plastic was brought in to be used in society, how it was protested, and how such a harmful object is being protected by agencies. Firstly, the use of plastic as a disposable, recyclable object was one thing that stood out to me as it was previously intended to do so. This, however, is countered by the reality that plastics aren’t actually recycled and more so become trash that spreads in our oceans and harms marine life. While plastic was marketed as recyclable, the usage of plastic wasn’t sustainable for the ecosystem especially when it became mass produced and widespread within the system. Due to it being widespread and something that affects the world to a high degree, certain legislative actions were made to stop the actions, most prominent would be the bans of plastic bags. This, however, wasn’t in the interest of the plastic monopolies, hence the agencies began to protect plastic bags from being banned by promoting the environmental benefits of plastic as compared to paper without considering the affects that plastic has on life and the life cycle of plastic as trash that remains for forever. My position from reading this is that I feel strongly about the politics of plastic as this issue isn’t just an environmental one, but it has become a political, economic, and social issue. While I do not promote the usage of plastic, I do, however, suggest that plastic is used in some cases for multi-use products as it is still very much durable. This way, the advantages of plastic are used. While I do believe that the advantages should be utilized such as durability, the mass production and consumption of plastic as a single-use product essentially creates the loss of value and reason to use a product that harms the environment to a high degree. While plastic does conserve greenhouse emissions and water, the effects it has on the evolutionary and biological aspect of humans and the ecosystem can be accentuated from a microscale to macroscale which would defer the entire purpose of utilizing such a product. Hence, I would want to minimize my use of single use products so that it can cause less issues to the environment.
Ken’s Meeting Journal:
Participants: Mr. Xu, Angela Zhang, Huaze Shao, and Ken Wu
Time: 2:00pm to 3:30pm Sept. 12
Purpose: Knowing Mr. Xu and being connected to this community, observing and learning about the surroundings, understanding the habits and uses of the garden space, and finding out the needs of the community and the service that can be offered.
What I learned about Mr. Xu:
- Mr. Xu is a 72 year old man with a kind and spirited personality who introduced us to the community that he’d been living in for over 28 years.
- He was previously a teacher at 22 years old teaching in vocational school on the subjects of Chinese Politics and Marxism for ten years.
- Afterwards, he came to Pudong, Shanghai, for work where it was rather rural at the time, being a land for farming. He’d seen the development of Shanghai in his time of work and is now retired like many other people in the community.
- In his free time after retirement, Mr. Xu has attended photography class and was honored as a monitor.
- In addition, he is the director of the committee of property management in the fifth building of the community.
- His family is also very talented where his daughter is a professor at a university while his son-in-law is a doctor. He has a grandchild who is currently 13, and a mother-in-law who’s currently 92. They live together and experience life together, bringing happiness to his mother-in-law and taking care of her.
The background information about the community:
- The buildings in the community are around 28 years old. The buildings served as model houses in which many communities of Pudong are based upon.
- The buildings can resist Level 10 Earthquake.
- Each building has its own garden space, but not every garden space is utilized at the moment. Currently, the sixth building’s garden isn’t utilized yet.
- Most garden spaces are grown with weeds and used as a place to throw rubbish where the fifth building had encountered a lot of problems with littering.
- The garden we are in charge of is the 5th building’s garden. While there was a major issue with litter, the garden was reconstructed by Mr. Xu and the people in the community to be the way it is now.
- There are 176 families in the 5th building. Half of the space is rented. The residents are mostly retired.
What else happened at the meeting? What did you notice?
- We noticed a lot of litter and trash that wasn’t managed by the community. This is especially prominent for areas that are neglected or were neglected before.
- Some trash included laundry racks which wasn’t cleaned up.
- In addition, cats aren’t particularly welcomed in the garden as their poop has acidity which makes the greenery die.
- Due to litter, a lot of surveillance cameras were installed to prevent littering from occurring. Most prominently, there were cameras that were not only pointed towards the garden, but also towards the building itself.
- There are also parking spot for cars (16 spots, 300 yuan/year) as well as for electric bikes where people can pay 1 yuan to charge for 4 hours.
- There’s also a 2 garden pavilions that were bought but aren’t the same size. Currently, it’s not being utilized well as people are parking their items in the pavilion and not using this as a social space.
- There are some lamps hanging on the grape trellis. Mr. Xu wanted to change them into some new ones, preferably larger ones.
- Mr. Xu also suggested that maybe there should be some baskets of flowers on the grape trellis in which the space becomes more like a garden area rather than just a space for rest.
- While utilization of the space could be used for playing cards or board games, the preference of the community is to have tea. This is because playing these recreational aspects could create more litter for the garden and disrupt the restfulness of the community
- There are several automatic sprinkler in the garden which is used to manage the cultivation.
What I would like to learn more about and how to find out?
- Mr. Xu told us that the government was going to improved the community in the recent days including some walls would be removed. I would like to know how that will change the appearance of the garden or affect us providing the service.
- We only met Mr. Xu and I would like to learn more about the other community members and their opinions towards the garden.
- Moreover, I personally would like the plans of the garden, specifically the size of the pavilion space as to plan for better usage of it.
- Lastly, I would want to learn more about how the garden is managed. For example, if there is a worker like Mr. Yan who picks up all the trash and cleans up the leaves.
What would I do to find out about these questions?
- I think that visiting the garden again and communicating more with Mr. Xu could allow us to acquire these answers
How did you feel about the meeting?
- A lot was learned and I feel like we have a general idea of what we could do to benefit the community.
- I will personally focus more on the garden space itself when and if we have another chance to meet with Mr. Xu and the community. I would prefer to focus on how others utilize the space and see it be used in their life.
This is the file of the other photos/videos we took, click if you are interested in this project:
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