Helping the Environment

"Keep Austin beautiful” and the “Austin Park Foundation”
We are all responsible for the world around us, especially for the parks, greenbelts and recreation areas around our homes. While walking through these places, you often see a lot of trash that was thrown away or out of cars or just lost on the way. Therefore, I’m helping the organizations “Keep Austin beautiful” and the “Austin Park Foundation”. These organizations care about parks and greenbelts and organize trash collections a few times per year.
So, I volunteered in these organizations and was helping to clean e.g. the Dick Nichols Park, Williams Creek, Shoal Creek, or the area around the 290. It is always astonishing, how much trash our small groups find in a few hours.

Recycling
For me, it is very important to care about the environment to protect nature, plants and animals.
As originally from Europe, I grew up with a lot environmental awareness so Recycling plays a big role for me. This may not only mean to separate plastic, glass, and metal from landfill trash. Another point is e.g. re-using or up-cycling things. During my Sophomore year, we built new thinks like lamps, small furniture items or decorations from things and materials that are normally thrown into the trash container. We used cans, old bottles, Glas, car tires and made new things out of these "raw materials"
My personal favorite is re-designing clothes. That is very simple and you can create you very individual fashion styles. So, I by most clothes in Goodwill, pimp them with adding details like glitter, cutting off arms, sewing things together or just wear totally different things together to create a new look. With the organization “Thrifty” we run a  fashion show with pimped clothes, sell them and donate the money or re-usable prices to homeless people.
I think, caring about our environment is a challenge and everybody can help with simple steps!