Archives for September 2021

For basic brainstorming I have a few directions to start with:

1. Mimicking sea creatures using plastic products, this requires more variety of material collected and has already been done a lot.
2. posing & advocating for good deeds in creative ways
3. show plastic in or as dead animals
4. show a meal/kitchen with plastic as the food with words:”Bon appetite”
5. human tangled with plastic bags/fishing nets

For community research we have scheduled a meeting for the coming Friday and then hopefully next week before class. We will be updating to this blog and coming blogs soon.

• What did you learn?
• What is your position or point of view?
• How do you feel about it?
• Now what? What are you going to do about it and how?

For the talk with the trash collector 闫师傅, it was very informative. I actually had a community trash collector back in Beijing, so I did know about this job before. But there were something new for me to learn also. 

What I did not know before was how the prices fluctuate throughout the “seasons” as the Shifu was calling it. It did make sense to me tho because they were selling the recyclables to the government but I truly assumed that they decide the prices all by themselves.

Also I didn’t know that so many things that I usually throw into the recycle bin were not taken by the collectors and that there were things that they wouldn’t bother to recycle just because of the price so that was also something new.

In terms of the opinion on the job, I realize there are many negative opinions especially among Chinese households against those seemingly “lesser” jobs so I’m glad that Shifu was treated with respect among his family.

For the reading:

I guess what I learned from it was the details on how people initially thought about plastic bags and the battle back and forth on the ban and fees against it in the USA. What I was most surprised about is how advertisements can diverge people’s attention from what problems they are interested in and what sounds “emergent” to them, and how corporates like ACC can abuse that characteristic about human beings to manipulate the public’s opinion and feelings towards plastics. Because in the end, public opinions are important and people are generally stupid……

For me personally, I’m all for any actions that go against the usage of plastic bags or paper bags or actually any human-made products that are not sustainable, but again, the success of them largely depends on how the public feels towards those products, which is hard because public’s mind is easily manipulated. So I guess the most long-term goal is to better educate the public, and also as we discussed, provide a way or option for the public to live more sustainably, such as labeling the kinds of plastic used in certain products to facilitate more effective recycling or provide plastic-free options in stores. 

• What are the things that surprised you the most? 
  • For me it was the fact that the movie was made so many years ago and the problem that it discusses is still not only relevant but getting worse. I have been exposed to a lot of materials about white pollution that no big numbers really surprised me anymore, in fact I’m fully expecting those numbers described in the documentary going up 10 times or more by today. So what got my attention was how little voice documentaries like this had and how little our mindsets has changed towards the issue.

• Did you previously know about the garbage patch before viewing the film?
  • I know there are million tons of plastic garbage floating in the ocean but I thought they were just floating around, never expected for them to form a gigantic patch.

• What is your reaction to this? How does it make you feel? 
  • Honestly I’m accustomed to the problem. I used to feel incredibly angry at it but now I just feel pretty disappointed.

• A quote that appeared in the movie was:
  “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
  What does this statement mean to you? Reflect on a time when you made a small change and it resulted in a large result.
  • I guess for the environmental problem it’s not entirely accurate. Sure people like the makers of this film are really dedicated and influential, but the truth is the problem is not becoming less dire after this documentary. I do recognize the difference they make and sure they have won over a multibillion-dollar corporation for once but this does not solve the problem entirely, we still have to consider the international interactions with laws of different countries come into play, and also the interest of their own multibillion-dollar companies. All in all, I think the problem is a bit too complicated for a small group of people to solve, and the world is a bit too big for a small group of people to change.
  • However, a small group of dedicated people can definitely make a difference for sure. Because the group is small, they are highly coordinated and there are fewer conflicts of interest. Just like the small group that won the campaign against ACC (if I remember it correctly). 
  • I guess for me, I can’t recall anything “physical” that had a big change in the result because of a small change I made. All the big “Yes this is working out!” moment has been the collective effort of changing and optimizing several critical parts of whatever the thing was that I was working on. So for me it was mostly the mental attitude or opinion or feeling that I could alter drastically by just making small changes. During the start of the pandemic in China, my social media was filled with negative news about the situation getting worse and worse everyday, and people’s emotions weren’t that stable during that time so there was also tons of complaining and ridicule and what we call 阴阳怪气 towards the situation on the internet. I was completely overwhelmed by the news, so I decided to protect myself and not be exposed to such negativity for a while. Felt better after doing that since I didn’t have to bear the emotional burden that I didn’t have to. 

• Do you think anyone in your family or your friends is aware of this problem? What can you or your family do on a daily basis that may have a positive impact on the garbage patch? 
  • I don’t know of any family members who are, but my parents usually buy their vegetables in a local market where you can bring your own bags to carry the groceries. 
  • For me I carry my own bag whenever I go shopping, I buy big bottles of water that last me for weeks instead of small ones for single-use, I try to use my own bottle when I could, and I do my best at garbage sorting. 

• What steps do you need to take to convince your family or friends to make a change in their habits? 
  • I think the biggest problem is to change their mindsets about how the problem NEEDS our collective effort to solve. Because most people I know are still under the impression that it is impossible for a single person to do anything just because of the sheer amount of force of the corporations and government. So it is important that they know that this problem needs everyone.

• What can be done about it? What should be done about it? Is recycling the answer to the problem?
  •  Do more ourselves, and do our best to educate others around us.
  • Get as many people to be on the side of science and reasoning rather than on the side of their own opinion and conspiracy and feeling of hopelessness as individuals as possible so we have a chance to affect the policy; encourage wholesale stores; design and manufacture more eco-friendly options of plastic substitute; recycle or chemically alter what we already have dumped into useful products.
  • No it’s not. As the documentary said, reduce and reuse comes before that. So cutting down the manufacturing of plastic should be of a higher priority (at least than what is is right now). But at the same time I would argue it is the most difficult problem to solve because it involves the interest of the biggest stakeholders and it roots deeply in our society.

• What is service-learning? What does it mean for different stakeholders? The community you are serving? The faculty teaching the course? The DSS program? And yourself?
  • A form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs, together with structured opportunities for reflection designed to achieve desired learning outcomes. (Jacoby, 1996c)
  • My own definition based on the reading: a combined experience of learning about the needs of a “client”  and providing service towards them, experiences gained from the reflection of which can be used to optimize the service further and form a healthy loop. 
  • The community will benefit by receiving innovative help from the students that are designed to meet their needs, and also gain more visibility towards some of their problems and so on. (as discussed on page 12 of the reading)
  • The faculty will explore new and more hands-on ways of teaching the same material, gain real-life experience which might be beneficial to researchers and so on. (as discussed on page 13 of the reading)
  • For the DSS program, this brings effective solutions to the problem they are solving, helps to explore the needs of different communities and to build relationships; helps their students learn about the interests and needs of their communities.
  • For me personally, although this needs time to be tested, I am envisioning myself learning a great bit about the community that I am working with, including their history, their visions, their attitude towards life as an ordinary person, but also more concrete things like how they operate, how they perceive our ideas, how they interact with us as who are generations apart, and how they try to suffice their own needs by working with us. I can also get into making real stuff for real person which could bring disagreements and conflict of ideas, which could facilitate the improvements of our approach.

• Time is very precious in our busy modern-day life. Why are you devoting your precious time to community service?
  • Same as any other hands-on-experience based activities, doing this could gain me knowledge that could not be easily obtained only through studying in universities. Basically “see outside of the books” as I would say.

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