Team Outreach
*Eliminating Styrofoam Plates from Trumbull School lunches
Our team analysed the financial and health impacts of Styrofoam. The detailed report is available on this powerpoint deck.
*Online Petition
Our team has come up with an online petition at Change.org to replace Styrofoam plates for our school lunches with Biodegradable plates. We feel that creating this petition and keep it going for some time will help us gain more support from our local community to replace the Styrofoam plates. We are yet to gain more signatures, but are confident that we will get it in full swing by the end of this school year.
*School Ecology Club
Our team was approached by the Middle school Ecology club to talk about Biodegradable Plates Vs Styrofoam Plates. We have done extensive research on the ill effects of Styrofoam plates. So we were more than thrilled to share our knowledge with other students at the science club. We also created a survey for them to analyze if the students are ready for this switch.
*Meeting with the School Principal
We showed our research to our school principal and proposed that sugarcane plates should be used to replace Styrofoam plates for our school lunch. Our principal is very supportive of our effort and proposal. However he mentioned there are challenges ahead of us. In one aspect, not everyone is aware of the harmful effect of Styrofoam to the environment and human health. Additionally, many schools may only be concerned by the initial cost of purchasing. Additionally cost of waste transportation, as well as cost to the damage of environment and health is hard for school itself to pay. Therefore we need a broader community to work together to support the initiative.
*Meeting with the Recycling Administrator
As part of our research project, we interviewed Trumbull town recycle center employee. He confirmed to us that “Styrofoam is one of the hardest things to recycle”. Currently “there is no safe and efficient way to recycle it”. Most of the time it will be hauled to a different town to be incinerated. The process releases tremendous amount of hazardous chemical to the atmosphere. It also cost Town residence to hire trucks to move Styrofoam waste to other town.
*Meeting with the Food Director
Our team met with the Food director for Trumbull Food services. We explained to her about the ill effects of Styrofoam plates and recommended sugarcane plates instead. She, being in a hierarchical role, is a little hesitant about the sudden switch over. We showed her samples of Sugarcane plates, and how well they hold all types of food. We also showed her the price comparison of both types of plates. We tried convincing her to allow us to use Sugarcane plates for lunch for a few days at the school and get back to her with the feedback.
*Sponsering Sugarcane plates for School lunch
Our team did fund raising locally and with the money collected, we bought bulk quantities of sugarcane plates. During earth day, we sponsored sugarcane lunch plates for our school. We require around 600 plates per school, per day, give or take a few.. We followed for few more days during the Earth month. Also sent out survey to the students to get their feedback about using the biodegradable plates and it was very positive. We passed this feedback to our Principal as well as the Food director. We are very hopeful that in the near future, the Food department will be using Biodegradable plates for or school lunches.
Mentoring FLL Team - Team Robolution
Since Trumbull does not have Robotics program as part of Elementary or Middle school curriculum / after school clubs, there are many kids and parents who are unaware of the robotics opportunities out there. We as a team are instilling interest in robotics programs among middle school kids. There was a group of students who were in the process of forming a FLL team. The parents asked our help to reach out to them and give a better understanding of the First Program. So a few of our students along with the coach went out to mentor the newly formed team, Team Robolution. We helped them get accredited to our local ACE foundation. We are extremely excited that this team who was formed with our help has won the Golden ticket in the Shelton FLL Qualifier 2016. We are planning on devoting more time to mentoring the rookie team.
Westport Mini Maker Faire
Westport Mini Maker Faire is a family-friendly showcase of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker Movement. It’s a place where people showcase what they are making, and share what they are learning. Makers range from tech enthusiasts to crafters to homeschoolers to scientists. They are of all ages and backgrounds. The aim of Maker Faire is to entertain, inform, connect and grow this community.
mc² Robotics setup a booth at the Faire to showcase FLL robotics. We created an EV3 robot which was a Rubik cube solver. Both kids and adults were equally fantasized by this robot. We had a lot of crowd flock to our booth just to challenge our robot.
We talked about FIRST to spread awareness to the community. We also created awareness about replacing Styrofoam plates for our school lunches, which was our project