Beach Cleanup

 On our Sunday, we took some more time to head out to Staples and get the supplies we needed in order to get crafting away a little more. Our idea is to create a poster board that has both our flyers, one about composting, and one about recycling, as well as a little blurb about the people we talked to. in addition, we want to rank the locations we went to on their dirtiness. We will also be showing off some of our videos and photos from the past couple of weeks that we have been documenting on our Instagram. We also want to give people the opportunity to check out our Instagram as we plan on posting on it no matter the occasion. On Monday, we spent some time in Wolfeboro on the trails and found about a plastic bag's worth of trash. What a fulfilling way to end our time on a senior project. We feel so grateful to have been given the opportunity to go out and learn hands-on. It is safe to say we learned a lot during this journey.  TOTAL HOURS 56

 Weekly Reflection This week brought forth some groundbreaking epiphanies for the three of us. On our hike to the summit of Mt. Kearsarge, we had the opportunity to talk to the fire marshall names Ron. He told us that he had always grown up in the area and that he had a special appreciation of the forests in New Hampshire. Throughout his life, he has seen, firsthand, the impacts of climate change on the communities he loves. He told us that fires have always been out west and that New Hampshire, in the past, only ever had them on rare occasions. He told us that he rarely goes a week without spotting a few fires from the tower and that if we do not change the way we live, this number will only increase. We asked him a few ways in which we could change how we live so we can avoid this. He told us that he only brings reusable items with him on his hikes as a way to ensure that nothing is getting blown off the mountain. He says the frequent trash he sees is plastics.  This sparked up some

 Today we headed on over to staples to get our rather expensive supplies for our project. We started grinding on our poster the second we got home. We made some serious progress on our presentation as a whole. We are all very excited to be able to present our findings to the school as we feel we made some awesome breakthroughs and had some stellar Ah-Ha moments. Cannot wait to get this thang done. 

 Today we hopped on the phone to talk to the one and only Mark. He helped us a lot actually. Mark used to work for a company out in telluride, Colorado and essentially set up a plan for the community to live a sustainable life, however this plan was vetoed unfortunately, however, mark is still incredibly insightful on the topic. He essentially said what we were doing was awesome, but there is much more that needs to be done then simply picking up trash. Yes picking up trash makes our communities more beautiful, however, what then happens with this trash. He said that recycling is important, of course, but it is not as simple as just turning an old bottle into a new one. In order to recycle and be positively impactful doing so, the process has to take less fossil fuels than it did to create whatever it is you’re trying to recycle. So with that being said, things like metal cannot be recycled because it takes a ton of energy to get those things melted down. That is an example of a time w

 This morning we made the trek over to Mindy and Brooks’ beautiful Bradley Lake home in search of trash. It was difficult right off the bat to locate and considering we were on a private property. We still managed to make our way along the road way areas and collect some plastic. We were there for a little while walking up and down the street before we decided to set off on our next task. We went down to Main Street in Concord to show off some of our new flyers and we hung them up in various locations and stores. We all agreed that our man Ron gave us a lot more insightful information than we anticipated as now we can almost calculate which direction trash will be blowing from. Our flyers focused on three main things, sustainability, composting, and recycling as we figured these are three little things people can incorporate into their lives to live a better life.  TOTALT HOURS 51

 Today was, once again, awesome. We decided to collaborate a little bit with Kelby, Lola, and Grace on their hiking excursion. We drove up to Mt. Kearsarge bright and early to see some of the views from the fire tower. We were anticipating snatching up some trash on the way up to summit, however we were pleasantly surprised to see little litter on the trails. This is interesting considering the hiking group always complains about large amounts of trash on their hikes. Once we made it up to the top, we went up the fire tower and indulged in a lovely conversation with our new pal, Ron. He is responsible for marking fires he sees and reporting them to other fire towers in order to mark their exact location. They then send this information to the closest fire station for immediate action. We actually witness a lot of smoke on the horizon and he informed us that it was controlled. We asked him several questions about his work as he has been a New Hampshire resident his whole life and he tal

Today was a good one. We woke up this morning with grinding on our minds. First things first, we made an awesome breakfast and made sure to compost egg shells, and the egg carton from my neighbor's chickens. Then we watched, "Our Earth", a Netflix documentary that highlights some of nature's beauties as well as some of the threats that face wildlife all over the world if action is not taken. We saw this as an opportunity to get a little more urgent about our matter. This is narrated by the one and only   Sir   David Attenborough. Some of the major issues are our carbon emissions. Unfortunately, we have to emit carbon when we drive from place to place, however, we have tried our best to make sure we are turning lights off as we leave rooms. Then we worked on our fliers. Each one of us tackled a different subject. Mine was sustainably living. I essentially want to talk about little changes everyone can make in their lives to reduce their carbon footprint. This is a life

 Today was a real good one. We had to start our summer workout packets so we made sure to get up early enough to fit everything in. We started this morning by making eggs from local chickens ( my neighbors) and some peanut butter toast. Then we made our way to the gym where we grinding out our agility/ mobility stuff before heading out to Hyland Lake where we spent the afternoon picking up trash. We found a lot of trash here. I understand that Earth day groups head down to this area to pick up trash, however we still managed to find a lot. Today was on the chillier side so we made our way along the beach for about two hours. Then, we had to make our way back to campus so that we could make our 430 practice. Today was successful!  TOTAL HOURS 35

 After this weekend, we decided that we needed to continue our education on the matter. We got on a phone call with one of Caroline's aunts who is also very passionate about the environment. She lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and told us about her immaculate community and what they do around there to keep it that way. Today was trash day and she told us that, like Bow, Gloucester excepts recycling and properly recycles what is given to them. This is not the case everywhere you go. In some instances, towns will use two different cans, however, both the trash and the recycling will go to the same firing facilities. This is not good news at all. We understand that this issue goes far beyond just environmental as it is also an economic issue as well. We have to recognize that for some communities, combining both trash and recycling is simply cheaper. We do not necessarily have a solution to this issue, but we hope to encourage people to take their recycling to facilities that will

 This week was nothing but fulfilling. We started off a little concerned that maybe we weren't going to be able to fill up our time only picking trash considering the local spots are clean. With that being said, we made a plan to try and reduce the amount of trash we were using every day so that we would not be a part of that problem. We still managed to get around to picking up trash as this is very beneficial, however, we wanted to go the extra distance. We would separate our mornings by meal prepping and getting ready to venture out. We made sure to pack our lunches and eat breakfast here as a way to save a little more money and reduce the amount of trash we were producing. We were very good about staying on top of this as this is something we are relatively passionate about. I think in all, we probably have a lot more hours than we have written out considering the amount of time we spend cooking and prepping for our day. Another thing that we have been pretty excited about is o

 On Day Six we had the one and only Lynda Everett in town, so we had to use her to our advantage. We came to campus relatively early before our game to walk on the rail trail and talk business. Being our mentor, we naturally had lots to talk about regarding our week considering we spent much of our time crafting functional solutions and ways to live a little greener. Lynda is a big hiker and spends a lot of her time in the mountains of New England, so she gave us a few ideas of places we could travel to. Also, Kelby, Lola, and Grace told us a little bit about their project. Since they are creating a trail map of local hikes, we were curious about how much trash they see on their routes. They, unfortunately, told us that they see copious amounts of trash and that maybe sometime this week we could combine our forces to encourage people to hike in these locations, and also to be more aware of the mark they leave behind. Our walk on the rail trail revealed little trash which is once again

Today was a day well spent in The City of Concord as we searched to find sustainable options for average joes. We actually initially wanted to talk to the people at the dump in order to find simpler ways to recycle and more efficient ways to throw out their trash, however, they were quite busy today and not in the mood for conversation. That’s ok! We will persist! And that we did. We wandered into Concords, Bonafide Green Goods store which sells sustainable alternatives for pretty much everything you can think of. We actually set up an interview with the store owner for next week so that we can get a little insight in how she lives life. I’m actually really glad we spent some time in there. Pek purchased a little card as a Mother’s Day gift that you can actually plant and a sunflower will grow. We thought that was pretty neat. Then, we communicated with our Mentor, Lynda Everett and she has decided to check out Bonafide herself and purchase some of their awesomeness. All in all, today

Today, we made the grand decision to head on over to Alton Bay. My aunt has a house in Young's Cove, so we decided to take the paddle boards out in search of more trash. We took the paddle boards around the exterior of the lake in hopes (not really) of finding some trash that could have potentially washed into the water from the recent snow loss and runoff from Mount. Major. We were unfortunately successful, and although Winnipesaukee is a clean lake, there were several plastic bags and fishing wire caught in the rocks. This was sad to see considering how much time I spend there and how I have likely abused Winnipesaukee and all its beautifulness. Once we made our rounds, we headed to the Alton Public Docks where we walked along the sand picking up a suspicious amount of trash. This was confusing to us considering it is so early in the summer season, and not a lot of people are likely at their summer homes. Throughout this process, we only found one singular trash can. On our drive

 Going into it, we knew that Elbow is notoriously clean, but we still wanted to help better the places we love and use so much. This morning, we woke up on the earlier side to get crafting our master plan. That being said, we started laying down the plans for potential trash cans at Kezar Lake considering so far, this was our most polluted area. Then we started brainstorming ideas for our flyers essentially encouraging people to carry in and out of these locations or place their trash in the cans provided. However, at Elbow, there are no trashcans, yet we barely found any trash. We came to the conclusion that this is because the Proctor community knows better than to leave trash in these areas, and there are probably people regularly coming to clean it. Basically, whenever we have a hard time finding trash, we take our time with trail maintenance to make sure people know where the trails are. Our day spent at Elbow gave us the perfect example of what these communities should look like.

 Today was a little different considering difficulties we ran into with my car. Yesterday we got pulled over twice because apparently you can’t drive with an unregistered and not inspected car or whatever. So this morning we took a journey to my auto works and the town hall to get that stuff DONE. Don’t fret, we managed to still chat about recycling and trash services at the town hall. We talked about how other towns don’t have these trash services and that was very telling in what little trash we found in Bow today. We indulged in this conversation for about an hours as they were pretty interesting in our senior project as well as Proctor Academy.  before making our trek back to the pond. There’s a pretty hearty loop around my neighborhood, and we made sure to walk there in fear of 1. The cops pulling us over again and 2. To reduce carbon emissions. We then walked around the pond picking up what we could find and clearing the trails a little bit so that fellow neighbors would be able

Contrary to our original plan, we decided a good way to test the ropes on our project was to go local at Kezar Pond. One of our challenges was planning out a time if we ran into a potential area that was not littered with trash. Today, we dove into our adventure knowing that all four hours would not be spent picking up trash. Yesterday, we purchased trash bags, trash grabbers, a speaker, and gloves to be prepared for whatever was ahead of us. It was a windy day, so we were careful not to let anything fly off into the lake. We got to Kezar at 10am to get to work. Kezar Lake is located in Sutton, New Hampshire, only about a 15-minute drive from campus. There are plenty of trails and a road that takes you around the entire lake. We walked for about an hour before stopping to eat lunch, and then we continued. One of the main things that we noticed was that there were literally no trashcans anywhere, and even though it was early spring, it was easy to tell pedestrians' laziness when it