Teaching With Trash

    As part as project three, my group decided to each come up with a research component.  I did an article which was called "Teaching With Trash".  "Teaching with Trash" is an article about students from the University of Idaho conducting experiments about littering around campus.  There were four students that were doing the project for the Department of Sociology and Anthropology‘s upper-division Archaeological Methodologies and Theory course.  Two students were undergraduate and the other two were graduate.   The main concern about littering were put into four zones. The four trash zones were; the football tailgating parking lot, the student recreation center, the library quad, and an alley lining sorority and fraternity houses.  Each student was assigned a zone a had to collect artifacts (trash).  The students mapped out where all the zones were and wanted to see if they could stop the amount of litter in those zones.
     The students decided to call their project The Campus Trash Project which started in the fall semester  of 2008 as class assignment.  The most common types of trash that was found around campus were cigarette butts, gum wrappers, beer bottles, and plastic cups.  To stop the littering around the football tailgating parking lot, students suggested designating trashcans to certain parking areas.  If there was trash around the area, the people would get fined.  That didn’t last to long, because no one followed that rule.  Students also found out that people were throwing their cigarettes on the ground near the library because they didn’t realize trashcans for the cigarettes known as “butt pipes” were right next to them.  Trash from the dormitories was falling out of trashcans and blowing onto the student recreation center.  The students suggested to stop the trash from blowing over was to get heavy duty lids to put over the trashcans.
     Overall, littering is a problem at a lot of college campuses, not just Kutztown.  This littering problem needs to be stopped and with students taking charge they can make a change.  It only takes a couple people to get the attention of others.  If one school can come with an "Adopt a Trashcan Program" so can other.  It will take a lot of effort, but one good role model needs to come forward in order for other schools to follow in the its' footsteps.