Journal Entry #20 – Noah

During this break I contributed to my CAS project directly and indirectly in many ways. Firstly, before we were let out on break I took a short trip to New York for an ACT test. This trip was short and mostly revolved around this academic activity that was the test but there was also time for me to hang out with old friends and see where I used to live. In New York the healthy and organic trends have started but as I was roaming around I started noticing that though people seemed to be caring more for the environment they still weren’t changing the way they were acting towards the environment. At restaurants every glass would have a straw and every specialty drink with a little plastic stir stick. These two little pieces of plastic that are used everywhere and all the time hurt the environment. Surprisingly I was the only one that asked for my drink without a straw and more and more it occurred to me that lots of young adults and teens in New York and other places around the world do not know the effects that small pieces of plastic have on the environment. Connected to this story, while doing research for my fertilizer and on plant production in general, I came across a troubling story that connects plastic pollution and fertilization/germination of plants. According to JournalduCameroun.com there are small pieces of plastic that can often be found in almost every agricultural plot of land in the world. Not only are these small pieces of plastic found on the land and in the soil of food crops but they are also found in trace forms in our bodies. This research is related to my project because in a organic operation of making fertile soil and fertilizer there can’t be these small pieces of harmful plastic, in a garden like Jardin de la Costa there is a standard that needs to be met which is that there should be no plastic in our food. The story at the beginning shows me indirectly helping my CAS project, by talking to my friends about what I am doing and refusing straws and unnecessary plastic items while also raising awareness for this huge issue. Aside from the indirect help and the research I did, I also visited our plot of land with Luis Felipe and Lindsay, during this short meeting we talked about our plans for moving forward and what we need to do in the next couple of months. Some things we talked about were: figuring out what materials futuro brillante can provide us with, either recycled or not, Connecting ourselves with the local welder who will hopefully be doing all the welding for the project and lastly we touched on some community projects that we could do with a trash clean up of the area at the top of the list. During this trip Luis and I also staked out the shed with a measuring tape and got an idea of the size and overall feel of the shed. After leaving we ended our CAS work for the day with some brainstorming over a pizza at La Forketta (We went because Luis said he ate some pizza from there with you before a board meeting so I thought it was fitting).