Environmental Biology Students Learn Lesson in Recycling
GULFPORT, Miss. – Southern Miss instructor Robert Turnbull assigned an eye-opening project to his environmental biology students for the spring semester. Students were asked to collect plastic bags from every shopping visit they made throughout this semester and bring them to class. With one week left in the semester, Turnbull made a visual example to his 30 students.
“I don’t want my students to see only bags,” said Turnbull. “People fill bags with garbage and if this is how many bags you’ve collected in one semester, imagine how much trash would accumulate if the bags were filled.”
Turnbull’s lesson was designed for students to understand the importance of recycling and conservation. For one of his examples, he explained that when the garbage truck makes its weekly or bi-weekly pick-up, people forget how much waste they produce. This situation then turns into an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind problem where people become blind to the stress they are placing on our environment.”
Kristin Hudson, left, and Renee Romain, middle, are seniors majoring in biology at Southern Miss Gulf Coast. As the students sort through plastic shopping bags with their environmental biology instructor, Robert Turnbull, they marvel at the amount of bags collected for their spring semester project. (Southern Miss Public Relations photo by Charmaine Williams)