Down to Earth School (38)/Interim Report

Interim Report
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_interim1112.php?team_id=38

PROBLEM DEFINITION
Since polystyrene (brand name Styrofoam) is not biodegradable, it will stay on Earth forever. This poses problems not only for the environment and wildlife, but for human well-being as it causes acute health problems. It is also a large creator of waste, not only in itself but in production. Restaurants are one of the consumers and distributors of polystyrene. We want to look at how the change in their use of such products can make a positive impact in the environment without causing a decline in their business. We proposed the question: How do quantitative changes in products (i.e. polystyrene and paper) affect the restaurant business and in relative decline or incline impact the environment? By developing a computer-based model, we hope to show that the environmental "cost" outweighs the monetary one. Even though the cost of polystyrene is comparably lower than the cost of paper, polystyrene is a creator of waste that effects the environment in negative ways. We hope that by developing this model, we can persuade our community and beyond to use recyclable alternatives instead of polystyrene.

PROBLEM SOLUTION
For our computational model, we plan on developing a game where restaurants compete against each other in order to make the most money and the smallest environmental impact. We will use sliding scale graphs to represent the relative amounts of money made and waste created, based on product use. We plan to develop an interface with two restaurants represented, one which will achieve the optimal outcome. The user would be competing against this restaurant. Each will have a waste collector that when full, will have to make a trip to the landfill, thus changing the environmental score. Also, if you use paper cups they will biodegrade after time. The user will be able to choose their products using a slider. We hope that by using the model, we will be able to discover out how restaurants can be successful, not only in business but as supporters of the environment as well.

PROGRESS TO DATE
We have made substantial progress this year on our project. We have learned about resources and computer-based modeling through the Project GUTS learning program. Our team and school began to understand the fundamental elements of complex systems that we can incorporate into our project. We changed our question after the October Kick-off and again after we heard from a scientist. Maximo S. Lazo, Ph..D e-mailed our team and gave us some helpful advice on our question, data-collection, hypothesis, and modeling. We then had to change our question so our in-put data is different than our out-put data. As for our data-collection, we hope to gather information on how much paper or polystyrene is used in our two businesses and how much waste they are creating, stick it into our model and find out how much money is being spent/earned vs. the environmental impact. We already have some of this data. Our team has also been working on a questionnaire for our selected businesses, particularly Un Mundo Cafe and Tacos Las Palmas, to complete. Both of the businesses we have selected are quite popular in our community. Cafe Un Mundo is a community business that uses primarily paper and is located in Silver City. Cafe Un Mundo told us that they prefer using paper and environmental friendly products but that they have to keep a steady balance between being too costly and being good to the earth. Tacos Las Palma is a Taco cart located along Highway 180. They use primarily Styrofoam. They will be the two businesses we will gather data from in order to design our computational model.

EXPECTED RESULTS
We hypothesize that by making negative and positive changes to the product uses of our two businesses, the cost of products will either go up or down and the environmental impact will go to the other extreme per say. For instance, we think that if we switch to all polystyrene, the cost will be lower but the environmental impact will go up and, in the case of our model, the environmental score will go down. Also, we believe that if people’s opinions of polystyrene change, that will affect the money earned by the businesses; so there will also be a customer satisfaction element. We hypothesize that we can make a good balance between cost and environmental impact by using more paper than Styrofoam.

Interim Comments
Hello,

My name is Dennis Trujillo a Physics and Mechanical Engineering student at New Mexico State University, and previous intern at Los Alamos National Labs. See the biography listed on my User Page If there are any questions relative toward your project feel free to contact me at dptru10@nmsu.edu.

Progress
Based on your report it seems some progress has been made relative to conducting research in your given field; considerations relative to the environmental and economic impacts of waste have been considered and a means of taking into account these various effects have been evaluated. This is evident through a general knowledge displayed in your report, several references are listed relative to this however most of your links are broken, if possible this should be fixed. Further research would be great as well. There is a general problem statement and means of addressing this problem defined and likewise you do have some working code. There is mention of modelling with NetLogo, this is a good approach given your particular problem approach. Further work needs to be done on the code in general in order to effectively model your process and take statistical data relative to rates of economic profit and waste.

Mentors
From your page it seems you have reached out to a mentor for help; this is wonderful as it will help you understand your process much better through working with a professional. If necessary the Challenge might be able to recommend someone who might be of help in terms of modelling your particular problem if necessary (consult@challenge.nm.org). Likewise I would be happy to provide recommendations.

Model
The model you are trying to construct should visually demonstrate the effect of a population with randomly determined restaurant preference on a business and local environment. I would recommend adding some means of 'influence' amongst turtles which might effect a turtle's restaurant choice. There is some mention of how you plan to do this, I would recommend starting with a general population of individuals predisposed to prefer one specific restaurant in addition to a population of turtles which will randomly choose a restaurant preference; an influence parameter would further add to this as turtles could influence each other by their own preference. Likewise if able it would be great to provide statistics relative to the generation rate of profit by businesses as well as waste generation given certain conditions