Job Shadow Reflective Narrative
I wasn’t sure what to expect when job shadowing a recycling coordinator. Obviously they coordinate recycling but it has to be more than that right? Does a recycling coordinator sit in an office all day or are they constantly moving around. Well, Ms. Sol Nunez who is the recycling coordinator for Sunset Waste Systems has a more intricate job than that.
Ms. Nunez jumped right into her tasks that day, explaining her duties and minor details along the way. It is her duty to ensure and most times persuade business owners to recycle in towns like Lindsay and Exeter. In recent years recycling has become more and more popular due to alarming rates of increased global warming in pollution. Thus, more businesses have accepted the responsibility to do their part to recycle and compost. However, there are those who are stubborn and just refuse to recycle.
According to Ms. Nunez convincing stubborn people is the hardest part of her job because even though how reasonable she might sound to a reasonable person some people just turn down the offer. In order to interact with and persuade potential customers you have to have excellent communication skills like Ms. Nunez. She doesn’t let one bad experience ruin her outlook on her job. Her good communication skills derived from her past job as a salesperson.
Her experience as a salesperson benefited her job as a recycling coordinator because when you’re convincing someone to recycle you have to have a good pitch to make them want to buy the product.
Ms. Nunez and I made our first stop at Webb Sanders Funeral Home in Lindsay. She had been trying to get them to obtain a recycling container for a while but she had trouble arranging a meeting with the owner. What she did was take me to the back of their business in the alley and

we inspected their garbage can. In order to convince the Webb Sanders owner to recycle she had to be prepared so she observed what they threw away and began to analyze ways for them to recycle while still saving them money. Her conclusion was they didn’t need the one yard large bin that they had, which they didn’t even fill half ways. They would be fine with one recycling container, a compost bin and a regular trash bin because most of their waste was cardboard, which is recyclable, and flowers, which are compostable. In order to fully convince someone that recycling would benefit them is to give them the financial side. She had me fill out a table that calculated how much money they would save if they switched from a one yard bin to the three set bins. If she returned to Webb Sanders and convinced them to recycle they could have saved about $35 dollars a month which is more than $400 dollars a year.
Back in her car Ms. Nunez pulled out a thick set of papers that had nearly every business, school, or office in Lindsay. She noted which businesses were already recycling so she didn’t need to go and bother them. She pinpointed her next victim, or as she recalled, to be the accounting firm on Mirage Ave. The owners of the firm had apparently already agreed to recycle so all we had to do was go in there and show them the business plan. Due to common sense they didn’t need the one yard bin that they had because the large majority of their waste was paper.
Amazingly Ms. Nunez helped them save a total of $60 a month by switching to a regular garbage bin and recycling bin. The face of one of the accountants when she realized how much money she would save was priceless and she said “Well, I don’t see why not”.
At the end of the day I was astonished at how much dedication and patience one has to have to be a recycling coordinator. I also observed that you really need to have a passion and care for the Earth in order to be good at your job like Ms. Nunez. The ability to communicate with potential customers is beyond my experience so I really admired Ms. Nunez for that who

had earlier confessed during her interview that she wasn’t always the most outgoing person out there. I consider a recycling coordinator as possible career in the future since I do have a strong will to help the environment I can enjoy it. However there are endless possibilities an aspiring environmentalist can go.