– Location:
Nejat Church Coquitlam

– I chose this place because it’s the church that I weekly go and volunteer for, and the assistant pastor of it is my reference for my university application. Since it has been a year that I’m volunteering for them, the assistant pastor knows me well and he trusts me, so I can ask him to be interviewed for my research.
It’s a church, so every week many people come to this place and this would make it possible for me to observe the routines and the behaviours of a large group of people. Today, I was thinking of observing the power house of it but that’s so difficult to do. However, the possible alternatives are observing the amount of food that they waste in the ceremonies, the amount of single use items (like single use platers, forks, and cups), and the number of cars which come and the number of the passengers of each car. For observing the amount of food waste, I can walk around and (indirectly) see if there are any food leftovers in their plate or not, and then assume the weight of it and then calculate the amount of GHGs that they release to the atmosphere from the landfills. For the single use items, I can ask some of friends to record the data for each trash can and see if people dump their disposals into the correct bins or not. And then, simply I can calculate the amount of CO2 that is released to the atmosphere from each step in the production process of that single use disposal. And for the cars, I can ask people about the distance that they have to travel to get there, and then I’ll write down the model of their car and then calculate the amount of CO2 emission of their cars in a year (assuming that every week they come to the church).
I’ll need to talk the assistant pastor because he does know everything about that place and he can give me good and useful information. I’ll ask one or two of my friends for observing the different locations of the church, so at a same time we can gather more information which helps my result numbers to be more accurate.