College of Business Administration

GROUP MEMBERS:

Michaela De Benedetti
Hayddy Odom
Nazir Sakandar
Scott Torcellini

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The earth unfolds, columns of grief following for centuries: The earth, its vaporous blood, solitude in its silence, runs through our pulse-beats. The wrinkle face of earth, in the invisible pages of humanity, allows everything to happen to her—for she has become the burning plaza of consumption. It was inside this plaza, our group formed, and wanted to resuscitate awareness for the illness that Mother Earth was undergoing. We turned to Walt Whitman, the great American poet, for assistance. His answer to his poem, “O ME! O Life!” ends in this matter: “That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse” (231). This project, through not constructed of meters or rhythms, was a small verse that we contributed toward Mother Earth. We hope that the verse someday will become a complete poem, that everyone will contribute a line of action: written exclusively for the recuperation of our soil.

Recycling is important; it helps preserve the earth and its resources; it can save species of plants and animals, and it can increase the value of life.

Objectives:

• To educate fourth and fifth graders about the importance of recycling and taking a Utilitarian approach performing a small contribution will help the greatest good of their community.

• To get children to be more aware of environmental issues surrounding their community

• What you give back to the environment, you will receive something positive in return

• Make their community a cleaner place

• Learn the responsibilities of working together as a class/team/and community to achieve a goal

• Importance of valuing your environment and how your contribution affects the community in connection with the Land of Ethics theory that we as citizens need to be responsible for our environment

• Too effectively educated the children about businesses that engender most of the waste in our country.

Presentation Day at Dailard Elementary

The recycling presentations were held at Dailard Elementary on the days of October 28th and 29th. The presentations consisted of the organization, I Love A Clean San Diego, which provided the “Reduce, Recycle, and Reuse” presentation. Urban Corp. contributed with a small skit explaining the importance of recycling. They also provided four bins for the classes. The ILACSD organization uses media consisting of “slide shows, storytelling and handouts pertaining to environmental issues. The ILACSD has an assortment of media materials depending on the “ages, setting, size and age of audience.” (www.ilacsd.org/programs/envir_ed.html). Next, we explained the recycling activity and contest to the students and answered their questions.

Recycling Activity:

A One-Time Collection: aluminum cans only. The collection was a 4-5 week collection, which started on October 30th. Each of the group members was collecting the cans from assigned classrooms, once a week. For example, Hayddy and Michaela collected can from all Fifth grade classes. The contest guidelines were as follows; whichever classroom (six in total) made the most money from their recycling collections of aluminum cans, won a pizza party from BJ’s Pizzeria during the week of December 9th.

All the money that was raised by each classroom from their collections was given back to the each class for them to decide how they wanted to spend the money.

Ethical Frameworks:

• Utilitarianism: This project will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. The students will benefit from new educational tools and everyone will benefit from recycling.

• Deontology: This project advocates treating the land as if it was not a separate entity.

• Justice: We decided to give the money raised from this project back to the school, so the students can benefit from their efforts.

• Social contract theory: Recycling only works if a large percentage of the population participates.

• Land ethic: Recycling is aligned with preserving the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.

Our ultimate goal is to inspire and empower the kids we worked with from Dailard Elementary to hold recycling as one of their basic values and take it into their future business communities. Another one of our goals is to have Dailard Elementary continue a recycling program for the whole school after seeing the impact and revenue our project generated for them. If this happens, our project will truly make a profound difference.