Getting the Big Picture

Fabian Casillas

Why?

• I chose this project mainly because of my own interest in environmental sustainability

• The consumption and unequal distribution of water availability worldwide was an issue that bothered me since high school when I met an exchange student who had firsthand experience in water scarcity

The Basics

• I created a series of 27 informational snippets to try and encourage environmental change in my fraternity house

• I posted one from each series (Water, Energy, Recycling) every week for nine weeks in the bathrooms and common areas of the house.

• Over this time I gathered quantitative and qualitative data to analyze the effectiveness of my images

The Images

• The following are the images that were used• They were posted in random order until slowly

they came together to make a simple image in the back to reveal the theme of each series.

• Again, it took 9 weeks to create 3 complete pictures in each posting area

Conclusions

• A classmate of mine, Zach, used recycling in our house for his project. His data revealed the following to me:

• My project spanned the weeks of February 16, 2014-April 13, 2014 • In this time we can see that Zach’s recycling

amounts did increase overall• This is most likely a direct result of Zach

presenting to the house on the importance of recycling, but my image postings hopefully helped in some way as well

Conclusions

• Finding data on a fraternity house’s consumption of water and electricity proved to be troublesome

• Speaking to James Cameron, President of Alpha Sigma Phi and Vice President of the Zeta Mu Housing Corporation, revealed only that consumption had gone down and money on utilities had been saved.– Could not say by how much exactly, just that it had not

been a drastic change, but a change nonetheless

Conclusions

• Having failed to collect any quantitative data I turned to interviewing tenants of the house to see if they had changed their routines

• Some changes that were common:– More conscious of shower lengths– Unplugging electronics more frequently– Washing more clothes per load– Installing low energy light bulbs– Recycling cans and bottles more often than throwing

them away

Final Thoughts

• I would consider my project a success, though not quite the success I wanted. I had expected a much more radical change in the data for the house. If I could see the actual numbers for energy and water it’d be much more satisfying

• I hope to continue spreading these and maybe more images to hopefully create an impact not just in my house but on my entire community

Sources• Lectures by Dr. Martin Shapiro, Fresno State• http://www.kab.org/site/PageServerpagename=recycling_facts_and_stats• http://www.greenwaste.com/recycling-stats• https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-recycling• http://www.clean-energy.us/facts/electricity.htm• http://www.chelseagreen.com/content/ten-surprising-facts-about-the-energy-we-use/• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/08/10-facts-on-united-states_n_117074.html• http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/freshwater_supply/

freshwater.html• http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/pubs/indoor.html• http://water.org/water-crisis/water-facts/water/