College of Business Administration

Social and Ethical Issues in Business

Kids Beach Clean- Up

GROUP MEMBERS:

Blanca Pulido
Peter Santos
Barbara McGlone

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

For our social change project we decided to implement a beach clean-up involving second, third, and fourth graders from Zamorano Elementary School. We chose I Love A Clean San Diego, a non-profit organization, to educate the children on the importance of keeping the environment clean. In order for the children to be able to participate in the beach clean-up we needed a $90 donation for the expense of the bus. The Wal Mart in Chula Vista was very helpful in donating the money to our cause.

Children in grade school are at a very impressionable age. Making them aware of important environmental issues hopefully will make a lasting impression on them. By educating the children at such a young age we feel that valuable lessons will be learned. They will learn to give back to their community, not to litter, and the importance of living in a clean world. We feel that if we educate children now then there wonÕt be trash laying around everywhere creating potential harms. Therefore projects like this will not be needed in the future.

On April 24, 1997 Stephanie from I Love A Clean San Diego went into the classroom educate the students about what garbage to pick up and not to pick-up such as: dead animals, needles, or glass. She showed the children a video about recycling, played an educational game with the kids, and also showed them some toys to make out of garbage that is not able to be recycled. The children were very enthusiastic by her presentation and were motivated and ready to go clean the beach.

On April 25, 1997 the actual field trip took place. We boarded the bus at 10:00 and we were on our way to Ocean Beach. Upon arrival, we put the kids in groups with adult volunteers, handed each adult a trash bag, and gave latex gloves to the kids. They cleaned the beach making the project a success. We were very surprised at the response from the people visiting the beach, they were very thankful and glad that kids were there.

Ethical Reasoning

-Deontology: Actions are morally right independent of their consequences. It is wrong to pollute the beach.
-Utilitarianism: Actions are right if they produce the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. Most will benefit if the beach is clean. People can walk around unconcerned about what they are going to step on.
-Land Ethic: Actions are right when they tend to preserve integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. The beach will be preserved and remain beautiful without trash. The sea animals wonÕt die from harmful trash thrown in the ocean.
-Social Contract: Morality consists in the set of rules governing how people are to treat one another or the natural environment for their mutual benefit on the condition that others follow those rules as well. In order to preserve the environment and ensure quality of life (for humans and non-humans) there are unwritten rules that people should not litter. Trash can generate diseases deadly to people as well as animals.
-Ethical Relativism (according to Hosmer): Based on the idea that individuals bear some responsibility to others within a society, requiring standards for behavior. We have a responsibility to ourselves as well as to others to keep a clean environment.

Overall we felt that our project was a success. Everybody involved was very helpful. The children were very enthusiastic and understood the importance of what we were doing. However, our greatest achievement is that the people involved with our project are willing to keep doing this project every year.

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