Bass

Abigail Bass
Elizabeth Caruso
UWRT 1103-029
11 April 2016
Inquiry Product Paper
The topic from my inquiry path project dealt with the environment and its place in
politics. Throughout my research, I learned more about why the environment is such an
important topic and why people should be concerned with protecting it. For this project, I
decided to focus more on the environment and the role individual people play in protecting it.
However, one topic that kept reappearing was thatThroughout my research I noticed how people
kept redirecting the environmental problems to just larger issues instead of smaller issues that
could be tacked day to day. Also, many people were putting put all the blame for the major
environmental problems on large businesses. Those people were right for blaming large
companies for some of the environmental issues and trying to find a way to stop them from
harming the environment, but they were forgetting that they also have a role in protecting the
environment but they were forgetting another detail. They forgot to emphasize the role they have
in protecting the environment and making sure they were living the most environmentally
friendly lifestyle before attacking other people. I wanted to help people to focus in on the smaller
scale impact that they have on the environment because it isnt worth trying to stop larger scale
pollution when there is even more pollution happening on a smaller scale that no one is talking
about. After finding all of this, I decided to focus more on making sure everyone knew how they
could change their lifestyle to live more environmentally friendly. It isnt worth fighting the large

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companies and battling against their environmental indiscretions when everyone else was also
committing smaller scale environmental indiscretions and ignoring them.
As my inquiry product, I decided to make a childrens book about that discussed how
people can change small things in their everyday lives to help protect the environment. Children
are the main audience with this product The main audience of this product is children because it
is important for them to learn from a young age how they can protect the environment. One of
the main excuses for people who do not have an environmentally friendly lifestyle is that they
did not grow up with one and that makes it hard to adjust to living that way. Many people did not
grow up living in an environmentally friendly way, so they use it as an excuse to not make
changes because they think it is too hard to adjust to that lifestyle. Since they Many people are
not informed on the issueissues concerning the environment , most people and therefore do not
realize the impact that they have on the environment so they have no idea that the way they are
living is hurting the environment. What is worse is that some people do know about the impact
they have and continue to live that way because they think they, as individuals, do not impact the
environment too much or that other people are more worried about it so they do not have to be.
This is a very dangerous phenomenon called tragedy of the commons (Vugt, 169). If people do
not realize or refuse to acknowledge the impact that they have on the environment, the
environment will be destroyed. I also think that believe it is important for children to understand
the impact an unhealthy environment could have on their lives. Children most of the timeMost of
the time, children do not understand that how their actions can affect those around them, which
makes teaching them about the impact they have on the environment very difficult. However,
they should still be taught how much the environment impacts their lives, such as when one fish
in the ocean gets a disease from some pollution that was leaked there and that the disease

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somehow travels all the way up to the human that who eats it (ODonnell). Some children could
see how seemingly unrelated these two things are and realize how dependent we are on the
environment and know that it needs to be protected and that they have a role in protecting it.
Since the product was a childrens book, the sources that could be used were very limited.
There were some very interesting articles that I read, however, they were too intellectual for a
child to understand so it had to be left out. One of these articles was by Dan Johnson and it
discussed the idea of sick building syndrome and how to counteract it (Johnson, 12). The
solution that is most prominent is called breathing walls. These walls are designed to take in any
contaminants from the air that would have not been filtered out in another air filtering system in
an older building (Johnson, 12). This new system of air filtration is very interesting, but it is not
something that a child could completely understand or help to construct. I felt that it was very
important to include things that children could participate in with this book. Many times children
do not feel like they have a voice and cannot do anything that would be beneficial or make a
difference. I wanted this book to show them that they do have a voice and can find ways to help
make a difference, not only with protecting the environment, but with other things that they are
passionate about as well.
Christy Brownlee had the most child-friendly article about the ways you could help to
protect the environment. Some things she discussed included shortening showers, turning off
electronics and other things when you are done using them, being sure to recycle as much as
possible, etc. (Brownlee, 1). I included many of these examples in the childrens book and
elaborated on them because they were great examples and led to other examples of what they
could do. These were very simple things that every child could do and feel as if they were
actually making a difference.

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I focused on many different ways that children could help protect the environment
throughout the childrens book. However, the topic that came up most in the book was littering.
Many people do not understand how much of an impact one piece of trash they littered has on
the environment. The small piece of trash one person threw out of the side of their car could end
up in their water source or a small animal could eat it or feed it to their offspring. One problem
with littering is many people believe they do not have an impact on the environment because
they believe it is just them throwing one small piece of trash out the window. The problem that
this creates has already been talked about in the beginning of this paper; it is called tragedy of the
commons. This means that everyone will think they are the only one littering so they will not
think they are causing any harm and may continue to litter. The problem with that frame of mind
is that, if everyone believes they are the only one littering, everyone will litter and the trash being
littered will accumulate to massive amounts. I want to teach the children, starting at a young age,
not to litter so they can realize how much of an impact their actions have on the environment.
Many people do not realize how much of an impact they have on the actions of others,
especially children. There was a study done to see how effective certain anti-littering ads had
been and what type of environments the ads should take place in to have the most positive
responses to them (Cialdini, 105-106). It was testing the likelihood of individuals to litter in an
already littered or non-littered environment when they saw another person walk through the trash
or add more litter to it. The study concluded that the individuals tested were the most likely to
litter when they saw another person litter in an already littered environment (Cialdini 106). This
study confirms how much of an impact one individuals actions can have on other people. I felt
that it was very important to focus on littering in the book so that the kids that who read it can
know that they should not litter and that their bad actions can impact the actions of their peers.

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Hopefully by reading it and actually going out and doing something about it, they could get even
more kids involved when the other kids see them picking up their trash. Hopefully after reading
the book, they will go out and take action to protect the environment, even pick up trash in their
neighborhood. It is possible that some other kids could see them picking up trash and may even
want to join in themselves.
It was important to include all of this information in the book so that children can
understand their impact on the environment and what they can do to help. Of course as they get
older, they will find more things that interest them and an appreciation for the environment could
even be one of them. However, all of this starts with a basic understanding of why the
environment is important, how their actions affect other people and the environment, and finding
small things that they can do to they could change in their lives in order to live a more
environmentally friendly lifestyle.

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Works Cited (moved to the next page)

New
Brownlee, Christy. "How to Protect the Environment!" Scholastic Choices. 16.7 (2001). Print.
Cialdini, Robert B. "Crafting Normative Messages to Protect the Environment." Current
Directions in Psychological Science. 12.4 (2003): 105-109. Print.
Van, Vugt M. "Averting the Tragedy of the Commons: Using Social Psychological Science to
Protect the Environment." Current Directions in Psychological Science. 18.3 (2009): 169173. Print.
Johnson, Dan. "A Cure for Sick Buildings?" Futurist. 32.5 (1998). Print.
Original
ODonnell, Liz. "Why Is Our Environment Important?" LoveToKnow. LoveToKnow. Web. 24
Feb. 2016. http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Why_is_Our_Environment_Important