Plastic Straws Begone

In the last unit of my elective class Biomimicry, we learned about fungi. We learned the different parts of a mushroom, and different decomposers and detritivores as well as composting and decomposition. We also learned about closed loop economies and closed loop systems versus linear economies. This is the difference between a product that supports itself and can be upcycled, or a product that is used and then discarded. Our class visited The Plant Chicago to learn about aquaponics. We toured their facility and did our own design activity. We also visited Interface, which is a sustainable carpet company founded by Ray Anderson. We learned about what it takes to make a large company sustainable. For this project, we picked a product to redesign. We had to research how the product is made currently, and then redesign our product to make it a closed loop system. We then compared it to Interface's "Mount Sustainability." This is a set of goals that interface set to become the most sustainable company, My project was actually able to reach the top of the mountain.

 

I did like this project because it was more of a redesign of an existing product rather than a total redesign. I am proud of the research that I did because my family has recently given up plastic straws. My favorite part of this project was drawing the systems. I liked this because it was more hands-on than just doing a slideshow. This project made me realize more and more that we need a solution to plastic straws. I think there are enough ways to make straws sustainable and eco-friendly, but everyone needs to come together to make it a reality.

Becoming A Satyagrahi

In the final unit of my elective humanities class, Global Peace, we continued to study violence and intervention. We also continued our studies of Gandhi and is 4 principles of nonviolence and Sharp's Methods. We did not have much time between our last project before winter break, and this project just after. We had a visit from Under A Tree which is a Socratic school organization. We talked about different beliefs and how we deal with our differences. We visited ALSO which is a violence intervention group where we learned about how to intervene peacefully in violent situations. For this project, we had to do our own violence intervention. Most of the class had been working on this project for the entire term or longer. I chose to use my time coaching skating to intervene with childhood health problems like obesity.

I really did like this project because we actually got to do something real. I really liked working with the kids and I am happy that I got to use my experience to fo a school project. This was a difficult project, because I did the actual intervention a while ago, and I had to piece things back together. I am proud that I had an impact on some people in real life.