For the past months, I’ve been researching the wastes produced on campus during classes and the ways we can reduce them. We conducted interviews with the head of departments for several subjects, such as Chemistry, Design Technology, and Arts. Although there were many solutions that had been taken place already, we were able to spot some of the things that we can do to further reduce the waste that is produced in our high school lives. Some of the potential solutions that we came up with were to conduct the science experiments on a smaller scale to reduce the chemical wastes, reduce the size and pages for the student booklet, use electronic resources where possible, create a poster next to the school printers about the size of the papers and other cautions (so that the younger students will not mistake the size of their paper and print everything over again.) Although this year we cannot visit the Gili islands to take direct actions to help solve the issue of waste, by researching the wastes that are created in our daily lives, we are hoping to raise awareness about waste management in general. Most importantly, I as an individual realized the amount of waste that was produced through my daily life and was able to deepen my idea towards the issue of waste management. By joining this global concern group, I became more conscious about the environmental impact of my daily actions and began to think about the things that I’ve never thought of. Also, by sharing the knowledge that I gained through this experience with my friends, I feel I am contributing to the awareness of waste management on this campus.
So far, I’ve been attending all the weekly meetings and have been effectively working with my teammates. The interviews that we conducted with the head of the departments mostly went well and I developed skills to effectively ask questions to get the information that we need. From the first stage of sending an email to the departments, we tried to be respectable as we can, however, we then knew that one of the departments felt that some of our questions were disrespectful. Since we were the ones that were taking their time, questions such as “Do you think the about of waste produced in your subject is reasonable? If not why?” could’ve disappointed them. I learned that when we are conducting research are asking to do an interview with someone, we always need to keep in mind that the action is not one-way but reciprocal. We can not just simply ask the questions and get the answer to them; we have to be truly respectful and listen to what they think. After knowing that they were upset about our questions, I tried my best to stay respectful and asked questions such as “what are the things that have been done in the department to reduce waste?” They were very willing to talk about the efforts they put into waste management and they understood how we share the passion for it. Given this challenging situation, I developed the skills to be flexible and open-minded. By flexibly responding to the situation, our group was able to provide the required information to this global concern group and made it possible for the group to come up with potential solutions to reduce the waste on campus.
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