The Past Two Weeks: Research Group

For the past two weeks, we have been spending a lot more time in our individual focus groups. Each group (research, presentation, website) has been meeting throughout the month and working to complete their specific assignments.
Today, November 5, we had an in-class group meeting where we converged and discussed the progress made by each group and what lies ahead.

Here is what the Research Group has been working on:

Everyone was charged with researching recycling on the web, condensing the information they found, and then sending it to Geneva Whitmore, who would further condense all of information eliminating the redundancies, and then send to the presentation and website groups.

Here is what the research group came up with during that session:
Helpful Recycling Tips and Interesting Facts
When you smell a dump, what you actually smell is the paper in the dump!
More than 20,000,000 Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day, using 133 square miles of tinfoil. All that foil is recyclable, but not many people realize it.
Results for 2007 Georgia Gameday Recycling by the pound: Oklahoma State 1,700, South Carolina 2,200, Western Carolina 1,300, Ole Miss 2,100, Troy 1,800, Auburn 3,500, Kentucky 1,500. (All results are from college gameday recycling during the 2007 Georgia football schedule.)
There was a 12% increase in amount of material recycled in Athens from the fiscal year of 2007 to the fiscal year of 2008.
UGA and the ACC Recycling Division have a strategic partnership to encourage recycling on campus during Gamedays. They have been doing this since 2005, they try to educate the public about recycling & collecting the recyclable materials.
The Athens government thinks recycling is important. They recently passed a policy for all ACC properties requiring that all events held by ACC or on ACC property must provide the opportunity for recycling.
Reuse your water bottles instead of throwing them away. Americans throw away 25,000,000 plastic beverage bottles every hour!
During the time it takes you to read this sentence, 50,000 12-ounce aluminum cans are made.
An aluminum can that is thrown away will still be a can 500 years from now!
If you had a 15-year-old tree and made it into paper grocery bags, you'd get about 700 of them. A supermarket could use all of them in under an hour! This means in one year, one supermarket goes through 60,500,000 paper bags! Imagine how many supermarkets there are in the U.S.!!!
A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose -- and even longer if it's in the landfill.
New Jersey has the highest recycling rate of all the states--56%!
The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world's people generate 40% of the world's waste.
The US population discards each year 16,000,000,000 diapers, 1,600,000,000 pens, 2,000,000,000 razor blades, 220,000,000 car tires, and enough aluminum to rebuild the US commercial air fleet four times over.
Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct!
A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.
Each year, Americans throw away 25 billion Styrofoam cups.
We use over 80,000,000,000 aluminum soda cans every year.
A 60-watt light bulb can be run for over a day on the amount of energy saved by recycling 1 pound of steel. In one year in the United States, the recycling of steel saves enough energy to heat and light 18,000,000 homes!
Every month, we throw out enough glass bottles and jars to fill up a giant skyscraper. All of these jars are recyclable!
Instead of throwing away plastic bags, use them as bin liners.
Re-use washed zip lock bags for sandwiches and snacks rather than using plastic wrap.
Wrapping paper, bows, ribbons, and boxes can be used to wrap someone else's presents.
Unneeded printouts can be cut and stapled to make notepads.
Rubber shoe soles can be recycled to make basketball courts and soccer fields.

The research group met again to answer several financial questions facing the project. They made phone calls to different organizations to see who might be interested in sponsoring a program such as ours. They also researched the plausability of sending mass texts to those who participate and found a couple of companies who might be able to help. The information was compiled and sent to the presentation group, who condensed the information for the powerpoint (you can find this information in a future presentation blog).

Here are some of the facts the group compiled during that meeting:

Costs of advertisements on ESPN's website vary from ad to ad based on content (image, video, or text) and placement. In addition, ESPN charges a minimum CPM (cost-per-thousand) bid for a placement-targeted ad and a minimum CPC (cost-per-click) bid. The median CPM cost is $.025 and the median CPC cost is $.01. These advertisements can link directly to your website. Deals are negotiable, but generally ESPN does not offer free ad space.
Average costs for advertising:
Newspapers – $1,300 per week for 2" x 2" adTelevision – $200,000 for one 30-second commercial (during prime-time)Direct Mail - $1,500 for 1,000 4x6 postcards (includes postage)Radio - $90 to $120 per week on a rotator (prices higher if time slots for ad are selective)Magazines - $1,200 to $5,000 per month or per issue (depends on ad size and demographics)Outdoor (billboard) - $3,000 to do artwork and install media on billboard; rates depend on impress level, ranges from $5,000 to $500,000 (the higher the qualify of the artwork and the larger the demographic group, the higher the price); minimum contract is 16 weeksOnline - $0.60 pay-per-click or $1,200 - $1,800 a month for aggressive campaigns (does not include search engine optimization) or $200 to $1,200 per year per banner ad on websites

At the group meeting today, the research group decided to elaborate on the links they provided. Group members think that each link should have a subhead so that readers will know what they are clicking on, so the researchers are dividing up the links and coming up with short one-liners to describe the website.