Students Recycle for Clean Water

Local Contemporary Environmental Issues. 

My topic for was Cans For Oysters and this is a process in which we (the students/faculty of CCS) take aluminum cans and we recycle them and get money for giving them to the plant that take all of our aluminum. We take the money and we buy baby oyster and we grow them big enough to put them back into the river. Once we put them in the river they provide things like habitats and they are natural filters for the river. Putting this into William McDonough’s sustainability fractal (more about the fractal here) would look a little like this:

Economy:

• ◦       We get more out then we give in

o   We give in one can and in return we get 50 gallons of water filtered a day

• ◦       We get paid for turning in our cans

o   When we go to the aluminum recycling center we get paid something like 40 cents a pound or something like that and it really builds up to be A LOT of oysters to help the bay.

• ◦       Takes money from one company and gives it to another
• ◦       Turns recycling right into cash money

Ecology:

• ◦         Cans for oysters is good for the environment because it:

o   Provided habitat for animals

o   One oyster filters 50 gallons of water each day

o   They’re in the food chain

• ◦       The program is all around environmentally friendly because they’re isn’t any shipping and there is little transportation in all
• ◦       Recycling cans makes sure there are les cans in the landfill
• ◦       Comes full circle to give back to the water life
• ◦       Provides habitats

Equity:

• ◦       The cans for oyster is equally healthy for everyone because there isn’t any really hard labor and no little children are working till they die and no one really is getting cancer from working with cans for oysters or anything so its healthy and safe for everyone
• ◦       Everyone does it
• ◦       Gives people jobs
• ◦       Saves the river that our river spoiled

Works Cited:
                 "Sustainability Triangle by William McDonough." YouTube. YouTube, 01 July 2008. Web. 13 Dec. 2012.

Written By: Heidi Ruse