Rebound: The Bounce Back Used Notebooks Deserve

Project proposal

Each quarter students buy brand new notebooks and throughout each lecture slowly fill the pages with diagrams and key points. However, as dead week rolls around many find they have excess blank pages leftover. A large portion of students hold on to these notebooks, never to look back at their notes, while others recycle or even put the paper into the trash. Our campus Rotaract Club is proposing an innovative alternative, to collect these notebooks at the end of each quarter to be disassembled and rebound into new notebooks. After disassembling all of notebook parts, papers of similar sizes will be grouped and then using aluminum screw posts and covers made of recycled materials, new notebooks will be formed. The recreated notebooks will be freely distributed at the start of the next quarter for their second lives in assisting student learning. To complete the “Rebound” project, our club will require upfront funding for a machining tools, customized stamps promoting sustainability, collection bins, and reusable promotion signs, along with funds to purchase pins and covers for each new notebook.

Environmental impact

Throughout this collection and repurposing process all unusable materials will be disposed of properly. We will invite any unwanted notebooks to be put into our collection bins, in this way we are disposing of notebooks correctly, even if it does not contain immediately reusable paper. Not only does this give the unused paper the ability to be used, it also ensures that all components of notebooks, such as the metal spiral are correctly recycled. We hope to alleviate improper disposal that occurs each quarter, along with providing a second life to untouched paper. If large scale recycling is required we plan to partner with Seattle’s recycling resources, such as Seadrunar Recycling, a non-profit based in Seattle.

Student leadership and involvement

This process will take extensive planning within our club’s committee to ensure proper promotion and execution of notebook collection. Donation boxes are planned to be placed outside of main lecture halls, dorms, and dining halls on campus. Redistribution will be executed at the start of the quarter by tabling in Red Square. A committee will be formed within our club and will be mainly lead by select officers.

Education, outreach, and behavior change

Each notebook will be customized with a stamp or sticker explaining the history of the notebook, along with promoting the importance of recycling used materials. The notebooks will also detail proper self-disposal at the end of it’s use. Our club plans to table in Red Square at the beginning of the quarter to spread awareness of the program, while distributing the rebound notebooks. 

Feasibility, accountability, and sustainability

The bulk of the manual labor required for this process will be completed by the members within the Rotaract Club. Each year we maintain approximately 25 active members and meet weekly to engage in service projects and to develop professionally. As our club is accustomed to service events we are highly equipped to take on a project of this magnitude. In this past year our members were a part of organizing and executing a hygiene kit packing event where over 800 kits were assembled for sex trafficked victims in the Seattle area. To maintain a long-term commitment to this plan, emphasis will be put on plan documentation and training of underclassmen. We also plan to conduct surveys when distributing notebooks to gain insight in how to better our program. Through these methods our “Rebound” project can be formed into a sustainable component of the University of Washington Seattle campus.

Project budget

The proposed budget supplies enough materials to create 100 notebooks. The limiting factors will be the notebook covers and aluminum pins. Each new notebook will require 2 notebook covers, with 200 proposed in the budget. Three aluminum pins will also be required per notebook, with 300 planned in the budget.

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Timeline