BI 101 Dubbs: Local Environment

For information on how your water, garbage, and recycling systems work, the best source is usually going to be local governmental or organizational websites. Many of these are collected in the boxes below. However, depending on where you live, you might need to do some web searching of your own. Here are some search tips that will be useful.

-- Add quotation marks around words or phrases that you want to keep together. For example, "water treatment".

-- Add site:gov to your search to limit your results to government websites. For example: "forest grove" Oregon "water treatment" site:gov

-- Some services are run by your city, some by your county, and some by regional organizations like Metro. Try searching for information based on your city first, then your county.

-- Research takes time. For many of the questions on this assignment, you will need to do some digging and backtrack from the information you've found. For example, I found out from Metro that my garbage ends up at the Columbia Ridge Landfill. What do THEY do with the garbage? What is the process there? To find that out, I had to go to their website. 

-- If you live in the Portland metro area, this video and article might be useful: Where Does Your Garbage Go? The Journey of Trash