Student Contributor -C. Reyes
Trash Free Earth is an organization that advocates for an environment that is trash free through educating those around them and getting the community to participate in clean ups all over. This organization sets up various projects to gather people apart of their organization and those not yet to clean up popular areas to make them look healthy and happy again. They often times partner up with other organizations or communities to clean up together.
By choosing to partner up with this organization, you are choosing to keep the earth clean for future generations to come. This organization makes a difference because they don’t just involve themselves, they reach out to other people and organizations to clean up and educate people while doing so. The mission of Trash Free Earth is to reduce the amount of trash impacting our natural environment through education and environmental stewardship. Some recent projects Trash Free Earth has completed include the San Gabriel River cleanup in Azusa, CA and the Elysian Park cleanup in Los Angeles, CA. During both of these cleanups, there was another organization present to help. From these two projects alone there has been so much liter removed that has led to a cleaner outdoor area for people to enjoy.
I believe that teachers and students could partner up with this organization by hosting their own clean-up of a popular area in their community. Trash Free Earth has challenges for people apart of their team and people who want to make a difference. The five challenges currently are; park cleanup, trail cleanup, street cleanup, art with trash, and host your own cleanup. The class can take a vote on which challenge they want to complete and then do so. The challenge rules state that a picture of the cleanup be submitted then they will mail a patch to you to welcome you to the Trash Free Earth team. This would be an awesome way for students to feel like they are a part of a huge community bigger than just in their neighborhood.
This organization makes a difference by cleaning up trash/litter around the community. This organization believes that by picking up trash/litter around the community helps it stay clean and healthy not only for people, but for animals as well. Trash can have a negative impact on communities and make people and even animals feel less safe. This was a similar project that I did with my 1st grade students. I had the students pick up litter/trash around the school and keep track of the recycles they picked up as well as the non-recyclables they picked up. My main learning target for this lesson was for students to understand that If we do not keep our communities clean, the trash/litter could end up in rivers and oceans which can cause pollution, threaten aquatic life, and interfere with people using the rivers/oceans.
Some of the aspects that were similar to this project was to help advocate for a trash free community and school. Another as to teach students the impact trash can have in our communities and to get the students involved with the community. This is a great way to teach students how small changes in our everyday lives can make a big impact. One thing that i told students when we completed our project was that just because we are starting small does not mean that our efforts were useless, your actions will change more than you think.
I think one thing that I would change for next time is to give the students facts about recycling and waste. I think that this would help them gain a better knowledge of recycling and why it is important within our community.
Some example facts to share with the students:
1.) ⅓ of the produced food is thrown into the garbage
2.) Aluminum can be recycled forever without a loss of quality
3.) More than 1,200 species of sea animals and fish are impacted by plastic