Love Canal: A 70-acre neighborhood in Niagara Falls that used to have a landfill but it became a huge hazard all residents living there because of the pollution and hazardous chemicals in the landfill.
Our homework one night was to watch a movie about Love Canal to prepare for our exciting class the next day, a class with Kent Armstrong!! Not only does Kent run the company Terrastryke Products, but he is also a Proctor parent!! On January 24th 2020, our AP Environmental Science class got the chance to meet Kent and learn about his business and learn about his work experiences properly disposing of hazardous waste products.
Kent made some really amazing points and taught us students lot about what he does. One of the biggest points he made was about how it will contaminate less, and hopefully not spread nearly as much if you leave all of the contamination where it is, that is because moving and transporting this hazardous waste can be extremely dangerous and can end up contaminating more than it was ever supposed to. Kent said, “If someone says it can’t be done, try harder.” Disposing of hazardous waste can be very controversial at times regarding the correct way to dispose of it. Kent uses that sentence to motivate him to work even harder and to have his way of disposing of those chemicals work, and work the best.
Terrastrykes way of disposing fo the hazardous waste that they deal with is to “harness Mother Nature” (Kent Armstrong). The way the do it is through microbes. They ingest the native microbes into the ground that is contaminated to make the amount of them grow and take over. When this strategy works, it is an amazing thing for the earth and Kents company. When it doesn’t work they proceed to “hog and haul” (Kent Armstrong). Hog and haul means that they dig up the ground and haul out the contamination, which can be extremely dangerous for that area and the people working on hauling out of the ground.
Kent Armstrongs time with our APES class was awesome. At times it was hard to follow along with what he was saying and it felt like he was in a rush sometimes, but it was really informational. Learning more about what we heard in Love Canal and learning about how dangerous the job can be was definitely my favorite part. I am so grateful that Kent came to talk to us!
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