Service Learning Project

Service Learning Project

With the world is development faster and faster, the demand for resources is becoming more and more needed than ever. So the conservation of resources becomes a hot topic that comes into people’s daily communication. As a student whose major is not about the new energy innovation and so forth, still want to contribute to the energy conservation. As a result, a joint an event about recycling, which is called TCA recycling event. Recycling plays a significant role in the energy conservation, considering there is still a lot of unnecessary waste of energy and materials out there. Recycling conserves a tremendous amount of raw materials, energies and reduces a lot of pollution including air pollution, substantial contamination, and even noise pollution. Back to the topic, this recycling event that I participated in was held at the Sam Boyd Stadium. The Sam Boyd Stadium held a lot of football games, and our duty was to collect the leftover plastic after the football match. This event was initiated by an organization called Rebel recycling organization. This group is appealing to reducing the littering around the campus and recycling a various kind of garbage. During this event, I learned a lot of unexpected things and had a better understanding of recycling had some reflections on this project. 

In the beginning, people were divided into a two-man group. Each group was given a bucket to collect the plastic bags and bottles. We all wore gloves to avoid getting an unnecessary injury. This task was supposed to be easy as a piece of cake. Because I thought most of the people participated in the event were well-educated college students. They could pass so many exams during their education; of course, they were up to this work, collecting garbage. How hard would it be?  However, I was proven to make a huge mistake the moment I stepped into that giant football field of Sam Boyd Stadium. What I saw was trashes all over the football field, left plastic cups, uneaten food and so forth. It was very shocking by this scenario, and I spent a few seconds to calm myself down for what I saw turn my impression about a football field upside down. My friend and I started from the back of the audience seat. Only after five minutes, we were very exhausting both mentally and physically.  We had to bend our backs to reach to the plastic waste wich were left on seat and spaces between them. At the first few seconds, most of us couldn’t work together in a sufficient way to save our time and energy because we barely talked to one another. Several times I had participated in this kind of events before made me realized that there should be a leader to be in charge so as to gather people together to work more sufficiently.

Some people might think why waste that time to choose a leader as long as everyone was working. At this moment, I had to say that the proverb that “more hands make work light” didn’t not work under any circumstance, not under a condition that a group of people without a leader.

Leadership plays a critical role in the team, and people always tend to be the followers for it is much easier to be one. Leaders have to equip a lot of characteristics, the right impression to people, authority, trust, integrity, etc. they have to earn the trust from their followers and build a relationship with every member of the team. They should be able to lead the way when the whole team is like the scattered sand. Once, I was in the Shine City Project; we got the clear instruction from the instructor when we were aimless and confused. Then we got the job done and made full implantation of the project. Or another situation was that everyone was arguing with another due to holding different opinions. They wasted their time to argue instead of doing the things they were supposed to do. And as a result, the event was not going to be successful.

From the several times ’participation of recycling events, they made me think the importance of it. First and for most, protecting the environment is undoubted an important mission and we can’t afford to ignore. In the past few decades, the air quality has been gone down in a fast speed owing to the development of industry and the increasing number of private cars. The air pollution is like an invisible killer for the human race. The lung cancer has been known as one of the top killers of death. To prevent the pollution from getting worse, I as a college student, as well as a member of the society, should take an active part in the recycling events and promoting the idea of recycling. The idea of developing this kind of fresh ideas to the neighborhood is not innovated. Some people have been involved in these events for a while. And this is the perfect time to use the proverb “Many hands make work light”. To protect the environment is a heavy task and it can’t be done by the individual. For the waste is creating by people every day. So the best solution to solve the pollution problem is to let people in the neighborhood to be aware of the importance of recycling.

Now the UNLV Rebel Recycling organization is aiming to spare no efforts to prove the environment in our community. And the point of this event is to reduce the waste in and around campus and recycle the resource in a more efficient way. What’s more, “Results show that people with access to a structured recycling program have much higher levels of recycling than do people lacking such access.”  (Derksen, 1993) So the more we promote the event to the neighborhood, the more efficient ways we can learn about recycling. And of course, they do not only promote the activities of the campus, but it also expanded its events to the county, states, and activity all over to country. This nature of this organization is non-profit. It aims to encourage people in the neighborhood to use their spare time to take part in the activities related to the recycling. To maximize the idea and effect f their activities, the UNLV put the posters all over the neighborhood to awaken the people’s awareness about protecting the environment. And people from one neighborhood will talk the idea of these events to people from another community in their daily communication. This will primarily extend the effect of these events.

After my meditation of these recycling, the event at the Sam Boyd Stadium was coming to an end. An older person from the group guided us the way we should work, and he was quite persuasive and looked lovely. The bucket we held as empty at the beginning and all of them were full of waste in the end, and we all smiled like a child carrying a full bucket of garbage. Although, during the event, most of us were tired and got dirty, when we looked at the clean and green football field, we all had a strong sense of achievement in the end. 

I still can’t forget this event after so many days have passed. When I close my eyes, the people, the sky, the scent of the green field and even the bucket all come to my mind like it just happened yesterday. When I think of the reason, which is quite simple and yet complicated. For the event brings me both bitter and sweet memories at once. And as for the complicated part is the deep-thinking of the idea of protecting the environment through this experience. That makes me realize that the responsibility for protecting the environment is on everyone’s shoulder not only on some individual or the government officer. We, as a small part of the society, should not avoid the responsibility of protecting the environment where we all live in for the sake of our health. That is the most precious thing in our life. Of course, having an environmentally-friendly society is all we hoped. And I believe we are on our way toward that.