Environmental Autobiography

In high school, I was always encouraged to care about the environment. By doing little things, we could create a much larger change. Often in classes, we would do little things such as turning off the lights during hot summer days and using sunlight to keep the room lit up. Or we collect used batteries from the whole school and recycle them. Most importantly, every Thursday was garbage day. On this day all garbage would be collected and sorted into the right compartments. During this time, we didn't have big fancy organized bins for each classroom. Therefore, students weren't really in the habit of recycling anything.

After reaching grade eleven, I decided to become a part to spreading these types of messages around the school. Therefore, I became a part of environmental communication when I joined the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Committee in grade eleven. Five students from each of the five high schools in Niagara Falls were selected through an application process to become a part of this committee. The members were seen as a communication link between youth and City Council as they worked together to make Niagara Falls a better place for everyone. We had many different sub committees for members to choose from. However, each member had to be on at least two committees. One of the sub-committees I chose was in charge of hosting a Green Week for all of the elementary and high schools in Niagara Falls. Throughout the year we worked hard to organize different activities and events for the week of April 19^th to 23^rd. Earth day fell into this week as well. Some of the activities for the event included a Moonlight Monday, Trash Snatch Thursday, Fresh Air Friday and a Green Art Show. Moonlight Monday encouraged elementary and high schools to turn off their lights and computers for one hour during the day. For Trash Snatch Thursday students cleaned their school yard by picking up all the litter they could find. Fresh Air Friday asked everyone high school to plant one tree in their yard to recall and respect the week. The final event for the week was a Green Art Show where students were encouraged to create art work from recycled material. By encouraging the youth to become active in sustaining our environment, I began a part of environmental communication for the community.

Another initiative the whole committee took part in was called Adopt-a-Street. This is when a street is adopted under the committees name and we ultimately become in charge of its maintenance. Therefore, every month we would put on our gloves and pick up garage along the street. We always made sure to recycle anything we found and put litter in garbage bags. Similarly, in April we assisted the community with an event called Community Clean Sweep. Various volunteers from all over the community would come out on a Saturday or Sunday and pick up garage all over the city of Niagara Falls. Our main goal was to sustain the beauty of our environment by keeping it clean and tidy as much as possible.

After finishing my two year term in the Mayor’s Youth Advisory Committee, I didn't have the chance to organize more community events or activities that would help the environment. However, I do remember that when I was in my Geography class in high school, the environment unit was my favourite. I designed a whole project around the concept of my ecological footprint and what needed to be done in order to reduce my results. However, after that I didn't get a chance to take more courses on environment until now. Nonetheless, I would say that my relationship with the natural environment continued to develop in a different aspect. By going for hikes, nature walks, visiting gardens and exploring different natural parks around the Niagara Region, I expressed my love and awe for the natural environment. I had never been interested in hiking along the natural environment. Actually during school trips, I often didn't like the idea because I was afraid of so many animals and didn't like bugs. I think that I have built a different perspective on the environment due to what I had learned about it. Otherwise before when I was younger I wasn't educated enough to know that every aspect of the environment is important. Now I feel the natural environment is being communicated to me as something that needs to be saved. I like seeing its natural beauty but when I find litter around these parks I feel others don’t realize what they’re doing. Although, there is a need for a larger group of people trying to recycle and sustain our resources it’s really hard to change the habits of the ones that don’t care too much about it. However, I would hope that in the future this would change as we become more and more concise of how we contribute to the sustainability of the environment.

My artifact for this class is a newspaper article that I was featured in: http://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/2010/04/14/niagara-falls-students-seeing-green