Transcript
- Theme
The outbreak of COVID-19 is undoubtedly a worldwide disaster. Although the pandemic in Hangzhou, where I am now living, is not as serious as that in Hong Kong, the prevention and control of the pandemic was once the focus of the government’s work. A dirty and messy city is undoubtedly more suitable for the spread of the virus than a clean city, so creating a “clean city” should always be our goal. Through the research and analysis of the garbage stations in different housing estates in Hangzhou, I hope to know what efforts the city has made to make the residents have a cleaner living environment, find out some advantages and disadvantages of the current policies, and put forward some suggestions for what we can do.
- Method and result of research
I was assigned housing estate as the site, but I thought this place was too large to do any in-depth research. Therefore, I focused on the garbage stations in the housing estates, trying to analyze the cleanliness of the community and the effectiveness of combating the pandemic.
I take the housing estate where I live as the main research object. It has a history of more than ten years, and this year, in early April, it began to implement the garbage fixed time delivery. The original four garbage bins in each garbage station were removed. Only in 7-9am and 6-8pm every day with the garbage bins appear to collect residents living garbage.
I also interviewed an aunt who was responsible for collecting garbage in my housing estate. She told me that a team of ten people collected and transported the garbage in ten housing estates nearby. Each housing estate has eight garbage stations, each of which holds four to eight garbage bins at a time. In other words, they need to run through 80 garbage stations, collect a number of heavy and overflowing garbage bins to haul away twice a day. Such a heavy workload can be difficult to complete within the limited time (sometimes they should work until 4am the next day), so I can often see garbage bins in the station during non-collection hours (usually at night).
I then visited another housing estate nearby. This was relatively new, and the garbage sorting and collection there is obviously better than that in my neighborhood. Each household was given a small bucket to collect kitchen waste, so that kitchen waste and other garbage can be sorted and recycled more accurately. However, in the housing estate I’m in, only two kinds of garbage bins are simply placed in the stations. According to my observation, people do not strictly distinguish between garbage bins. Generally, they just put all garbage into a bin which is relatively empty.
The cleanliness of the ground near the garbage stations also varies.The garbage stations in my old housing estate always has stains and even garbage on the ground. When there is no garbage bin or the garbage bins are full, some people will directly throw garbage on the ground nearby.
At the garbage stations in the new housing estate, the floor is always clean, and no garbage goes out of the garbage bin. People are always very conscious of throwing their garbage into the right trash can.
- Documentation and making of the video
I wanted to make my video a little bit more interesting, so I set the main character as a waste spitball. I imagined the spitball also as a resident of the housing estate, and the garbage bins as its houses. The whole video is narrated from the perspective of paper ball, telling the current situation of garbage disposal in the housing estates, reflecting some existing problems and giving some reflections on the pandemic. I chose the main time of shooting at night, because people mainly come out at night to throw the garbage accumulated during the day, and because the quiet night is more suitable for such a story full of fantasy.
- Objectives and reflections
The regular centralized disposal of garbage in the housing estate is really helpful to keep the it clean, and it will not let the perishable garbage pile up on the roadside for a long time to give off a bad smell. But if this strategy does not have enough manpower cost support, it is difficult to play the effect that should do. The residents’ moral level and self-restraint ability will also affect the practical benefits of this garbage disposal strategy. As a member of the housing estate, and a member of the city, we may not be able to change the general strategy, but at least we can do our part to properly deal with the garbage generated by ourselves, and do our part to clean the city and make the city more able to withstand the test of the pandemic.
–Yi CHEN 3035638703
Bibliography
A. Borozdukhin, O. Dolinina and V. Pechenkin, “Approach to the garbage collection in the “Smart Clean City” project,” 2016 4th IEEE International Colloquium on Information Science and Technology (CiSt), 2016, pp. 918-922, doi: 10.1109/CIST.2016.7805019.
Singh, Jaspreet and Singh, Jagandeep, COVID-19 and Its Impact on Society (April 3, 2020). Electronic Research Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vol 2: Issue I, 2020 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3567837
Verma, Ashok and Prakash, Sadguru, Impact of COVID-19 on Environment and Society (May 31, 2020). Journal of Global Biosciences, Volume 9, Number 5, 2020, pp. 7352-7363, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3644567
关于《浙江省生活垃圾管理条例》政策解读, 2021, 政策法规处, Available at http://cgw.hangzhou.gov.cn/art/2021/4/26/art_1229482814_1722910.html
video：https://youtu.be/W7hBVxfd2yM
Appreciate your research and attempt to learn about the subject matter through an interview with a resident and visiting the sites to understand the journey.
Not quite clear if spitball is a mis-translation or a metaphor for something else? Or, do you simply mean wastepaper ball?
All aspects are addressed and presented with competent depth.
Demonstrates an understanding of and the ability to apply and synthesize research, concepts and
key issues relating to a well-identified topic.
The video adequately identify the most critical aspects of the theme with a focus on the waste area and presents a competently articulated analysis and interpretation of the topic.
Creative use of research fieldwork materials.
Some good attempt at techniques – the wastepaper ball jumping to the hand! Organization of the content is clear. The verbal narration and sounds could be improved – Is there a reason for the “soothing” background piano music, instead of the actual sounds made by the wastepaper/trash and background sounds?
Written and verbal articulation, and references, are of competent academic standard.