Pollution Prevention
Authors: Megan Pontsler
Faculty Supervisor: Anelise Farris, Ph.D.
Community Partner: Keep Golden Isles Beautiful
Abstract:
For my Service-learning project, I partnered with Keep Golden Isles Beautiful, they are affiliated with the Keep Georgia Beautiful Foundation, to help with pollution prevention in my local area. My community partner helped me pick local areas that needed beautification, mostly trash removal, and I got some friends involved with helping me clean up these areas. My community partner provided the cleanup materials (trash bags and gloves) and gave designated dump sites for the waste we collected. Our focus was the beaches on St Simons island, because these beaches are becoming more populated as the weather warms up. This also means an increase of trash left to pollute beaches, so it was my focus to rid the beaches of this waste. It is important to keep our local beaches and public nature areas clean so others can continue to enjoy a healthy environment, but also so wildlife can live safely in its habitat. I have learned that serving the community can be fun and easy and plan to do regular cleanups with my newly formed group! Future cleanups will become even more important when tourists come to the area to enjoy our local beaches; especially since tourism is a large part of St. Simon's economic structure. I hope that even in passing my group, others will feel inspired to do environmental cleanups, or become more conscious of how they treat our beaches on their future visits.
