Recycling and Sustainability Website

CAS Project Part 2

After months of planning and initiating a website for Recycling and Sustainability, the website has now been launched on the internet server and has been getting many views so far. The link to the website is osc.lk/recycling. My CAS project aimed at demonstrating the challenges that been undertaken and developing new skills in the process. I’ve already posted on my process of developing the website in my previous post here and this post focuses on the success of my CAS project, webpage content, and further implications.

My idea of creating a website for my service, Recycling and Sustainability, was evolving in my list since 10^th grade when the service leaders at that time wanted to spread awareness about the environment through different mediums of communication. I always wanted to design a website for my own learning and for my service. I took the opportunity of my CAS project to achieve one of the goals in my list. My previous post dedicated to the creation process of my CAS project in which I went debt into the coding, developing, and planning part of it. These were the crucial stages of this CAS project which would decide the success in the future. There were many difficulties with understanding the specific codes and technical language, but I overcome them through instant research and approaching computer science students, such as Anuda, for practical understandings of coding. Other than that, designing a suitable outlook for the website was also difficult, there were a lot of considerations while designing this such as the audience, purpose, and structure of a service group website. My aim while designing the website was that the language used and accessibility to information should be familiar and easily accessible to all types of audience. The purpose for this website is to inform the readers about Recycling and Sustainability service group at OSC, this includes informing about general history, our work, projects, the services we provide, etc. it’s more of a promotional website than an organization website.

The website has 6 different aspects to learn about Recycling and Sustainability. The Home page explores the approaches on and off campus of Recycling and Sustainability service group and is focused on a general overview to this service. It also contains different logos and text structures which helps in delivering the message more clearly to the viewers. The home page also contains various statistical information, real news examples, and reviews from alumni students for selling this service group to the viewers. The next tab ‘Learn More’ was designed to give a full in-depth knowledge about the service’s background and past work we have done but this page is directed for new students joining Recycling and Sustainability because it briefs the, about the work and what to expect. I thought this page is a necessary for our students so they can clearly understand the scope of Recycling and Sustainability which should increase the overall productivity of the service. The next tab was created for ‘services’ which is focused on the services Recycling and Sustainability provides to the OSC community for waste management, this will allow viewers to know the expectations of our service and the different aspects we cover such as providing recycling boxes, canteen waste management, biogas, etc. Through this page I aim to share the level of productivity of this service group on a large platform.

In OSC, service is a big part of CAS for students therefore I dedicated an entire page for blogs on which viewers can navigate different experiences of students and further learn about the service group. This page also allows viewers to directly access the blog page of the student or teacher and explore this service from their perception. My idea for inserting this page was that viewers should gain understanding about this service from different perspectives which will better evaluate this service group. The last two pages are ‘Contact’ and ‘Gallery’ which contain details on the location of Recycling and sustainability, and directs viewers to a google folder link which provides with images and videos. In my initial plan I had more aspects to cover such as comment sections, news section related to waste management, etc, but I thought it would be better to examine the success of this website then in the future I will add these tabs. Now I think I would extend my CAS project in future and make these changes.

Through this CAS project I aim to spread Recycling and Sustainability’s aim of reducing carbon footprint to a wider audience around the world and hope to be a part of a change. I have already gotten a lot of views along with positive feedback from various teachers and students by which depicts the success of my CAS project. My hopes are that this website will be a part of promoting reduction of carbon footprint and I hope people learn about the importance of recycling. This CAS project allowed me to use my technical skills for a good cause and was able to show the challenges that been undertaken and developing new skills during the process. During my previous years in service I realized that our service did not have any startup or any digital platform by which it was hard for us to design something new, such as a website. This year as a service leader my goal was to create a base for spreading awareness through digital medium, through this I would prefer if future students in Recycling and Sustainability learn from my website and build on this idea of digitally spreading awareness and create new tools such as Instagram pages, develop this website further, etc, because nowadays the digital world is growing much faster and community services such as ‘Recycling and Sustainability’ have important messages for people with environmental issues which can be spread digitally.

Recycling and Sustainability website is a great achievement for me  and the service group however if I had more time and experience with coding, I would have created a more advance technological tool for spreading awareness. My other idea was to create an app for Recycling and Sustainability which allows students to navigate relevant trashcans on the school campus and possibly scan the garbage to identify the correct bin for the user. This would be launched on Play Store and App Store to have access to everyone and could have been more productive than a website because it enables everyone on campus to efficiently separate waste. Initially I did create an outline of this idea but due to the complexity in coding, time frame, and work load, it wasn’t feasible to accomplish it as a CAS project, however it would be great in in future OSC could build this app.

Overall, my CAS project was a tough journey with coding and designing my first website however I found the process very meaningful for my future and I did improve in a lot more areas of learning.