Beach Cleanup

   This week has been awesome and we have gotten so much work done. We grinded out our flyers which consisted of sustainability, composting, and recycling. These flyers had a ton of work put into them using the app canva Caroline showed us. We were productive with our work on these and finished them up in a few hours all combined. They were fun to make and we had so much fun doing it. we got busy at home and started our morning by setting up a call with Mark Kodak, Caroline’s step father. Mark has a strong background in the recycling business he worked for sunshine recycling. His job for them was to create a business model to most effectively recycle. His job consisted of a lot of math, he had to calculate how much energy it would take to ship recycling to the factory versus how much it actually took to recycle the bottle. For isolated towns like Telluride CO, he found that energy to ship the recycling was more than the actual process. This brought up a great point for Is as we have be

 Today we picked up more trash than we ever have before.  It was an extremely successful day at lake Winnepisaukee.  We started off our day on the trial that ran through the middle of part of the lake with a nice view. There were several people fishing off the trail and while picking up trash we found a lot of fish- related trash left behind. After walking on the trail we made our way around the lake where we found serval pieces of trash.  We filled up an entire bag of black trash! After getting back to catherine’s we seperated the trash because there was a few bottles. We brought this to the dump afterwards. Hours 1-2 

 Today we used our time to take a trip to staples. We got a massive poster board along with markers, crayons, stickers, and construction paper. We also printed out more flyers and pictures of other fellow urfers we talked with so we could put them on the board. We worked on the poster for a couple hours, we used our art skills, talked about our interviews, and put some of our flyers on it as well. We also took time to put all of our Instagram stories and reels together @trashnomopew  Daily hours 3

 Today we got busy at home and started our morning by setting up a call with Mark Kodak, Caroline’s step father. Mark has a strong background in the recycling business he worked for sunshine recycling. His job for them was to create a business model to most effectively recycle. His job consisted of a lot of math, he had to calculate how much energy it would take to ship recycling to the factory versus how much it actually took to recycle the bottle. For isolated towns like Telluride CO, he found that energy to ship the recycling was more than the actual process. This brought up a great point for Is as we have been promoting recycling for our senior project. He talked about the benefits, our earth looks cleaner, and we are protecting wildlife and ourselves! His main point of his business was to take these recyclable items and naming them into something else instead of shipping them off to a factory. He used an example of a glass bottle, grinding it up into sand and selling it to the tow

 Today our team was very lucky to have gotten the opportunity to spend it at Bradley Lake thanks to Mindy Bicknell. After talking to Mindy about my senior project, she very nicely offered for our group to go to her lake house on Bradley at some point, so we decided to take her up on that! We did not find a lot of trash at Bradley, we stopped a few times on the side of the road and also down at the “Main beach” but it was a close it community and was very clean. Although we didn’t find success, it was still a great thing to see. We thought it was going to be a different outcome at Bradley lake because it was a super windy day. After talking to Ron at the summit of Mt Kearsarge, we realized that wind should be accounted for in any environment especially on a body of water! We ended up going to Elbow to see if we could find anything but again no success. We made our way over to Concord and hung up pour flyers on composting, recycling, and sustainable living anywhere we could along Concord

 Today was very eventful and one of my most favorite days during senior project!! We decided to join Lola, Grace, and Kelby’s hiking adventure and trudged our way to the summit of Mt Kearasarge. Catherine, Caroline, and I decided to bring our grip grabbers along with us for the hike up. We managed to grab a few pieces of trash but nothing crazy. Once we got to the top, we climbed up the fire lookout tower where we were greeted by a nice man named Ron! Rob proceeded to show us how what he does during his day at work. It was very interesting and we decided to ask Ron some questions about trash. He said, “Most of the trash I see is during the fall, many peoples water bottles will be placed down carelessly and then blown away by the strong gusts of wind” (Ron). He explained how most of this trash ends up at the bottom of the mountain and people like him have to go out of their way to pick it up. He said that due to global warming, there has been a significant increase in forest fires aroun

 Today was a very productive day, we started off the morning with a homemade egg breakfast. We composted the eggshells and egg carton from Catherine’s neighbors chickens! Then we watched “Our Earth” a Netflix documentary on the ocean and how we need to make a change before it’s too late. This documentary was inspiring and we learned a lot from it. It talked about greenhouse gas emissions being released into the atmosphere, this is due to cars, planes, and many other man made products. It was also made clear that living a sustainable life can help improve the problems us humans have made in nature. After this, we each three different flyers. These flyers were made up of living sustainably, importance of recycling, and composting. We worked hard on these and also learned in the process! It was fun and our team definitely wants to make more of these. Total hours 6 

 Today we got to highland lake at 10am. We had some trouble finding the main beach area but eventually found it after parking and walking around. On our walk to the beach we found a few glass bottles on the waterline that we picked up with our grip-grabbers and threw them into our trash bag! We headed back to campus at 11 because we saw that rain was coming our way. After eating lunch we headed back to Highland Lake to continue our trash pick-up from 12-3pm. Once we got to the beach, we were on the hunt for a public trash can but could not find one anywhere.. We decided to continue walking along the waterline after finding some small plastic debris under sand on the main beach site. We walked along a trail we found at the lake and found a lot of trash. One thing I noticed was two bags of dog poop left in the woods by the lake. Our team thinks if there were public trash cans where people could dispose of the gifts their dogs leave at the lake, we would not see this waste left in nature.

 Today we got on a call with Muffy Caroline’s aunt. She is from Gloucester and knows a lot about waste because of her job as an organizer. She has to sort everything her clients give her that they may not want or need. We also talked about what she uses to compost. Muffy has six chickens in her backyard and we talked a lot about food waste and how she gives what she doesn’t eat to her chickens. Catherine and I have both also had chickens in the past and we related to Muffy when we said we used their feces as fertilizer for our gardens! We also plan to head to the dump again to get some info from the workers there about their experiences with trash and what people can do better. Total hours 4

      This week has been a massive learning experience for sure! We have had our ups and downs and navigated each of our days to make the most out of them. We went into this project thinking we were going to pick up trash every single day but we started to incorporate talking to small businesses as well which was a great addition. Each of us contribute to the project in positive ways, Caroline has helped a lot with the formatting of flyers, Catherine has provided us her home and shown us all of the spots we have traveled to, and I have helped by providing the drip grabbers buckets and gloves we use.       We started our trash pick up journey at Lowe’s where we stocked up on equipment. This was a fun day, and we also decided our first stop for project period. Kezar Lake was the first trash pick up site we did. It was a windy day and the sun was out, all three of us were excited to get to work. This was a small lake with a lot of camping ground and we found it shocking that there was not

 Today my mom our mentor came up to Catherine’s which was good because we have been talking over FaceTime. We went to proctor because we had a lacrosse game but we traveled up earlier than we needed to. Because we had time to kill we decided to go to the rail trail and show our mentor what we do in real life time. She was impressed with how much we have learned and was happy to see us scavenging for trash on the rail trail. My mom was interested in the store boneafide. We went there with her after she left catherine’s house and picked up some lunch containers and reusable rags! We said goodbye to our mentor, she was very pleased with our work. Our team is very excited to start interviewing more sustainable company managers 

 Today we went to concord and went into a sustainable store. We have been interested in their products and business since day 1 of this project. We traveled into town and got to see the inside of the store which was neat, the store is called boneafide. We are in the making of setting up an interview with the store owners and getting to know more about their company and drive for sustainable product growth! Before this activity we traveled to the dump and tried to talk to some of the workers but they were pretty busy sorting trash so we didn’t want to bother them. Hopefully we will catch them another time when they’re having a good day. It was very enlightening to visit boneafide today, seeing how much reusable products the store was selling was inspiring, It gave me hope for the future of the country. One thing I noticed was rechargeable products, the use of these tools can make a massive difference towards climate change and green house gasses being emitted into the atmosphere. Make s

 Today we made a fantastic decision to travel to Alton Bay where Catherine’s aunts house is. It was a beautiful day and we were lucky enough to take the paddle boards out on the lake! This was a perfect fit for our group because Caroline our bionic friend can’t paddle. We paddled around the outskirts of the lake and found several pieces of small trash that have probably washed down from the melted mountains. We also walked around the public beach part and found a supriseingly large amount of trash in the sand! We only saw one trash can for public use during our time spent at the lake and there was little to no trash inside which isn’t the best look. But, after picking up some maps we decided to mark them up where we think there would be good and accessible spots to leave trash and. After we left and catherine and I went to proctor for lacrosse practice. Tomorrow we will learn what really happens to this trash and recycling at the Concord NH dump which we are all very interested in. It

 We woke up early this morning and we worked on our maps and flyer designs. We’ve been planning on throwing up flyers at the different spots we have been to in the past for trash pick up. After an hour of doing this we drove up to Elbow pond and stayed there from 10am to 1:30pm. During our time here we walked the trails of Elbow including a walk to the sweat lodge where we cleaned up the trails a bit. Elbow was very clean and we found little to no trash, which is what we love to see. As we are happy to see that there is no trash the next places in our itinerary seem to have more trash around them. We’re hoping to put the flyers that we’re making in and around proctor campus! Total hours- 4

 Today we started off fixing our transportation system(catherine’s car) and got it registered. We traveled to the town hall and asked several different employees their ways they keep their neighborhoods clean. Many told us by separating their trash and recycling, today was indeed trash day and every house had them ready to get scooped up outside their houses!! After we left in our registers car and went home to Catherine’s, from there we walked to Putney pond near Catherines house. We found trash on the street, mostly cans. We spent our time walking around the trails and waterline at the pond from 11-2 pm. While searching around the pond we did find a lot of trash at all. We reflected after we walked back how people around Catherine’s neighborhood keep it nice and clean, which is great to see! Tomorrow we are hoping to find more trash so we can make a bigger impact and continue on our trash clean-up, our journey awaits!

 Today was our first day starting our trash pick-up adventure.  In advance, we had already gotten tools like grip-grabbers, trash bags, and gloves. This equipment was essential for our work because it protected us from harmful objects. We got to Kezar Lake at 10am today and started our journey. Even as we were pulling in, the three of us noticed that there was no public trashcan. I got out of the car and immediately picked up seven items of trash with my grip-grabber. These items were in the parking lot where several people look to throw out their waste in a trashcan. The grip-grabber was nice because it let me reach trash in thorn bushes, and the gloves protected my hands. We walked around the trail of the lake and found a lot of trash near the waterline, these items were sometimes hard to get to because it was hard to keep your balance while snatching them. We found several bottles, cans, wrappers, and small baggies, all could be easily avoided with reusable containers! Our group lef