Anti-Waste Innovation

For the final couple weeks of the year, our APES class is doing a project to help promote waste reduction at the end of the year when students are moving back home. 

What are the Project goals and outcomes? Our project is going to be a Good Stuff Drive Challenge. Dorms will collect all of the stuff that they don't want anymore, it will be a competition to which dorm brings in the most items to be sold. Then, the items will be put in a town-wide yard sale, open to all of Andover and whoever stops by. Each dorm will have three tarps to put their goods on and when their items sell, that dorm gets the money.  

What is the Project timeline? Starting today, we are starting to plan and take action on our project. We are planning on this Sunday, the 21st of May. Emails and announcements will be made this week before the weekend. Then we will have the sale in the green in front of the Stone Chapel, or inside the Chapel depending on the weather. Whichever dorm donates the most items, and has the most money in sold items will have a dorm dinner with the earnings.     

Personal Reflection on the effort so far: So far, we have figured out what we are going to do, and the teams are picked to help make this idea a reality. Zack, Delaney, and I are a part of the fundraising and managing the money (Donations). We visited the established Free Shop in the Stone Chapel to get a sense of what we can do. We have also toured the common rooms of both MLS and Sally B. dorms. We looked at their donation boxes, already set up. Zack, Delaney, and I have a good idea of what we need to accomplish.     

All pictures taken by Miles on May 12th 2023. 

UPDATE

Thursday, May 18th, 2023 7:00pm

The Tag Sale is happening on Sunday, May 21st, 2023 from 2-5 pm. Happening on Proctors grass near the Stone Chapel and Maxwell Savage. 

Since the last post, we have gotten a lot accomplished. Our class has created posters and advertising for the tag sale. An assembly announcement happened today with Jackson, Zack, and Ryan. The tag sale is also posted in this weekend's Weekend Love. Proctors, weekend schedule of activities. With Zack's email, the Tag sale is also going to be posted on the official Proctor social media.  

We have come to a conclusion on how the Sale will run, We learned that weighing the goods will be a lot of work as well as an idea of people individually selling items not part of a dorm. We have decided that whatever money the dorms raise they will get, so there won't be a money "pot" that the winning dorm will win.    

Goods collection boxes are going into dorms, and hopefully are being filled up. We are also going to present our results in Proctor's Innovation night on May 23rd from 6-7 pm. We will present what we accomplished and how it went as well as why we recover these items instead of throwing them out.   

PERSONAL REFLECTION - 

So far throughout this project, it has been a big undertaking, but nothing we cannot handle. I feel like I have contributed a solid effort along with my teammates. I have learned a lot about the importance of recovering these materials and how simple some actions are to help with waste. My biggest accomplishment was calling the town administrator to ask permission to use the town green. Although permission wasn't granted this time, I need to get better at calling people as I don't like doing it. This project has shown me how much we can get accomplished as a team in a short amount of time. I am very curious to see how many items are actually donated for our project after our efforts to publicize and advertise our tag sale.