Engraving Ideas

Posted by Truman
Written by Hudson and Truman
Problem: Our group believes that the problem “Children are not motivated to recycle” is the biggest problem our country faces when it comes to recycling in the future. This is because of our interviews with experts, data, and interviews in the community. Our interviews show that Children are the main culprit for uninterest in recycling. Our interviews with Allen Company have confirmed that children are the most unmotivated to recycle. We asked Allen Company questions on who they think is the most unmotivated to recycle. They told us that as a recycling center, they do not get many children that are motivated to recycle. So, they believe that children are not motivated to recycle. Our data shows that a part of our problem is true. This shows that there is little motivation in recycling. Recycling “rates in California have fallen below 80% for the first time since 2008.” “More than 3.5 million additional containers are littered or put in landfills every day” —LA Times. Motivation is what compels you to do something. So for example, if I saw a wrapper on the ground and I don’t want to go through the agonizing effort to bend down and get it, then I do not feel motivated to pick it up. These rate that we found from the LA Time show that people (not specifically children) aren’t motivated to recycle. A quote from PLoS Biol shows that children are the culprit for the rates. “Out of the classroom, people have failed to make the link between their individual actions and the environmental condition.” So far, our data has not clearly stated that children aren’t motivated to recycle, but our interviews clearly state that children are the least motivated to recycle. Hudson interviewed his dad and the information points clearly towards children. Hudson said  “I interviewed my dad who as a kid did not recycle at all then when he got to be in his late thirties he started to. He started to because he learned of how important it is to our planet's health.” This shows that children shockingly do not realize how important recycling is to the planet's health. Based on our interview with experts, data, and interviews with the community we concur that the problem Children are not motivated to recycle is reliable and indeed a problem our planet faces.
Solutions: This week our group worked really well together to come up with 5 solutions each. We all came up with some pretty amazing ideas; but we all felt really strong about two specific idea: BINZ and Bottle Raffle. Binz is a game that encourages kids to recycle in a fun way. Once you open the water bottle there will be a code on the inside the bottom of the water bottle, so you have to drink it to “scan” it. After you locate it, scan the code and collect the character! They range from common to ULTRA-rare! Some codes will have Coins (to buy clothes or other things for your characters), or powerboxs (the more powerboxs you have, the more power ups you can have for characters) Every time you scan a bottle you have a better chance of collecting a rare character. It’s a fun way to get kids excited about picking up bottles! In this way kids would have some purpose to the trash they leave behind! This will motivate kids to recycle. We also came up with another great idea, The Bottle Raffle. So the idea is every time you recycle a water bottle (plastic) in to the Bottle Raffle bin then you can get one raffle ticket worth 5-10 cents. Then the money from turning in all the bottles to a recycling plant then gets turned into the Grand PRIZE! you can have a water bottle raffle. This will be done either physically or electronically. The physical way would be use in a small community, like a school. This way would be done by having a tag dispenser on Bottle Raffle bin that you stick on the bottle then you write you name on the bottle and it becomes your raffle ticket. The electronic recycle raffle would be conducted by having a scanner scan the barcode on the water bottle then on a touch screen on the bin you type in your account name and password and the scanned water bottle raffle ticket will go to your account. Then electronically, it randomly picks a winner and their prize selection. These solutions our group came up with is similar to solutions other organizations are trying to do. To get kids interested in recycling, organizations like PepsiCo Recycle make competitions between school to see who can recycle the most. An example of a school that wins a lot of recycling “awards” is American University who has achieved 100% “no waste!” These other solutions that have been used before, inspired us to make the Bottle Raffle and Binz!