Fabian Casillas undertook a project focused on environmental sustainability, particularly water consumption and recycling, by creating and posting informational images in his fraternity house over nine weeks. The initiative aimed to raise awareness and encourage behavior changes among residents, leading to observed positive shifts such as increased recycling and more conscious water and energy usage. Despite challenges in measuring specific quantitative data, Casillas considers the project a success and aims to expand its impact further.

1. Getting the Big Picture
Fabian Casillas

2. Why?
• I chose this project mainly because of my own
interest in environmental sustainability
• The consumption and unequal distribution of
water availability worldwide was an issue that
bothered me since high school when I met an
exchange student who had firsthand
experience in water scarcity

3. The Basics
• I searched the internet to find quick but
hopefully impactful facts to post
• I then used Adobe Photoshop and vector
images to create a simple image with overlaid
facts that were then split into 9 individual
images.

4. The Basics
• I created a series of 27 informational snippets
to try and encourage environmental change in
my fraternity house
• I posted one from each series (Water, Energy,
Recycling) every week for nine weeks in the
bathrooms and common areas of the house.
• Over this time I gathered quantitative and
qualitative data to analyze the effectiveness of
my images

5. The Images
• The following are the images that were used
• They were posted in random order until slowly
they came together to make a simple image in
the back to reveal the theme of each series.
• Again, it took 9 weeks to create 3 complete
pictures in each posting area

12. Conclusions
• A classmate of mine, Zach, used recycling in
our house for his project. His data revealed
the following to me:
• My project spanned the weeks of February
16, 2014-April 13, 2014
• In this time we can see that Zach’s recycling
amounts did increase overall
• This is most likely a direct result of Zach
presenting to the house on the importance
of recycling, but my image postings
hopefully helped in some way as well

13. Conclusions
• Finding data on a fraternity house’s consumption
of water and electricity proved to be troublesome
• Speaking to James Cameron, President of Alpha
Sigma Phi and Vice President of the Zeta Mu
Housing Corporation, revealed only that
consumption had gone down and money on
utilities had been saved.
– Could not say by how much exactly, just that it had
not been a drastic change, but a change nonetheless

14. Conclusions
• Having failed to collect any quantitative data I
turned to interviewing tenants of the house to
see if they had changed their routines
• Some changes that were common:
– More conscious of shower lengths
– Unplugging electronics more frequently
– Washing more clothes per load
– Installing low energy light bulbs
– Recycling cans and bottles more often than throwing
them away

15. Final Thoughts
• I would consider my project a success, though not
quite the success I wanted. I had expected a
much more radical change in the data for the
house. If I could see the actual numbers for
energy and water it’d be much more satisfying
• I hope to continue spreading these and maybe
more images to hopefully create an impact not
just in my house but on my entire community

16. Sources
• Lectures by Dr. Martin Shapiro, Fresno State
• http://www.kab.org/site/PageServerpagename=recycling_facts_and_stats
• http://www.greenwaste.com/recycling-stats
• https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-recycling
• http://www.clean-energy.us/facts/electricity.htm
• http://www.chelseagreen.com/content/ten-surprising-facts-about-the-energy-we-use/
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/08/10-facts-on-united-states_n_117074.html
• http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/freshwater_supply/fre
shwater.html
• http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/pubs/indoor.html
• http://water.org/water-crisis/water-facts/water/