1

Writing Project 2:

Save Our Environment

Cameron Forghani

Professor Bocchino

Writing 2

February 22, 2021

On a brisk, summer morning along the coast of Isla Vista, I found myself jogging

into the water once again with a board under my arm. It was after I had my daily period

of relaxation that I came out of the water to see a sad, but terrifying sight.

Surfing isn’t only a hobby - it’s my passion. Any day I can find time to get myself

there again, I use it. My wet suit has become a part of me, and my hair has been

discolored more times than I can count. Although surfing is somewhat of a sport, where

the ocean is my playground and the waves are my friendly opponents, it would be

ignorant of myself to push aside the marine life that resides under me. Many of the

friends that I’ve made when surfing have an appreciation for the ocean and those that

live in it, whether it’s active participation in ocean clean-ups or studying the animals that

live in the sea. This is why the next sight I saw on this summer morning was one I wish I

never learned about.

The unfortunate lifestyle that we’ve been accustomed to and ignored the

circumstances of has found its way to ruining this turtle’s life and manifesting it into a

horror that no one would like to see. When I saw it, I could not believe that they were

alive and that the plastic lasted as long as it did. I also realized that I couldn’t remove

the plastic from them because it’s basically become a part of the turtle. The

carelessness of the big companies that heavily wastes plastic, particularly the food

catering industries, not only made its way onto this poor turtle, but has continually

affected other marine life that takes the plastic as food. Even for myself, who is

someone who spends as much time in the ocean than not, this was a wakeup call for

me. Making sure the beach is clean has become a part of my routine, and as long as

that image of the turtle is in my head whenever I go to the beach, it will forever be in my

routine.
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One issue that the world has had since the introduction of plastic, but has become more

prevalent over the last 50 years, is the prevention of plastic waste and sustainability with that

plastic, and this is one of the largest issues that the academic discipline of Environmental Studies

discusses about. In the academic article “Economic and environmental assessment of reusable

plastic containers: A food catering supply chain case study,” Riccardo Accorsi, Alessandro

Cascini, Susan Cholette, Riccardo Manzini, and Cristina Mora analyzes food packaging in the

catering industry, particularly how it affects the environment, what packaging types are used, and

what machinery and methods that can be used to increase environmental sustainability within the

business.1 Because of the use of advanced mathematics used throughout the article to present the

food catering companies with convincing information, it’s difficult for the average reader to

understand the point of the writers, which is why the use of a short story such as the one in the

genre translation can help to understand the basic idea of the academic article - which is

environmental sustainability and plastic reduction. The genre translation is meant to simplify an

academic article that calculates numbers and presents ideas for machinery to increase

environmental sustainability in the food catering business into a short story about a surfer who

finds an innocent turtle with plastic wrapped around them presents the same idea while relating

to a broader audience, while using a first person point of view to show a relation to how the

person really felt about seeing the turtle in that state.

The structure that is common within modern scholarly articles is to separate sections with

subheadings, and Riccardo Accorsi et al.’s article does not sway away from this same structure.

1
Riccardo Accorsi, Alessandro Cascini, Susan Cholette, Riccardo Manzini, and Cristina Mora. “Economic
and environmental assessment of reusable plastic containers: A food catering supply chain case study” International
Journal of Production Economics, vo. 152 (2014). 88.
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In the article, there are 8 different sections from the beginning to the end, starting with

“Introduction,” going into “A conceptual framework for designing food packaging and food

distribution network,” into the very lengthy “Environmental assessment,” and eventually

reaching the “Conclusions and further research” section.2 The “Environmental assessment”

section by itself goes through pages 93 to 97, which is one-fourth of the entire article, and

indicated from the title alone, it’s evident that the most important part of the article is the focus

on the environment. This section involves a lot of calculations of how many types of boxes are

used over certain periods of time3, charts of current and future catering supply chain networks4,

and graphs of life-cycle scenarios5. It’s for these reasons that it’s clear to see that Riccardo

Accorsi et al. had their main evidence focused on these numbers to prove their points, which

made this article a respectable addition to their discourse community. Since the article is mainly

about the waste of resources in food catering, phrases that are specific to this topic such as “Cost

elements6,” “Package life-cycle impact assessment7,” and “RPC configuration8” are used often,

and as such are connected to the discourse community, but separated from average readers that

do not understand these phrases. It’s clear that for reasons like these, the article wasn’t intended

for average readers, but was targeted potentially for people who could make a difference in food

catering companies and their consumption of plastic and other materials.

With the purpose of simplifying the point of Accorsi et al.’s academic article, there are

three non-academic articles that helped to accomplish this - the first being “The Ocean Cleanup

2
Riccardo Accorsi et al., “Economic and environmental assessment of reusable plastic containers” 88-99.
3
Riccardo Accorsi et al., “Economic and environmental assessment of reusable plastic containers” 96.
4
Riccardo Accorsi et al., “Economic and environmental assessment of reusable plastic containers” 92.
5
Riccardo Accorsi et al., “Economic and environmental assessment of reusable plastic containers” 97.
6
Riccardo Accorsi et al., “Economic and environmental assessment of reusable plastic containers” 97.
7
Riccardo Accorsi et al., “Economic and environmental assessment of reusable plastic containers” 97.
8
Riccardo Accorsi et al., “Economic and environmental assessment of reusable plastic containers” 97.
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successfully collects ocean plastic, aims to scale design.” This article speaks for itself in the title,

where the Dutch non-profit company “The Ocean Cleanup” uses its ships and massive netting

devices to collect floating plastic in the ocean. The primary reason why the character in the genre

translation was a surfer is because of the fact that the ocean is a haven for most of the plastic

waste in the world. As it says in its article, “Not only is it dangerous and potentially deadly for

animals to munch on synthetic materials rather than food, it also increases the amount of toxins

in marine life and humans who eat seafood9.” It’s known knowledge that there is a plastic waste

problem in the ocean, but there isn’t a lot of action or active awareness taking place, and this was

one of the main examples of an organization that is doing something. The quote above also leads

into the next example, which was of animals who not only eat plastic, but can be literally

suffocated by it. The story about the turtle that grew into the plastic ring came from the short

non-academic article “Peanut: The Story Behind a Poor Turtle Deformed by a Six-Pack Ring.” In

the short article, it’s said that “Apparently she was trapped in a six-pack ring at a young age,

couldn’t get out of it, and her body continued to grow around it10.” The reason this came into

play in the genre translation was to dramatize the story, and give a visually explicit example of

how plastic waste can affect sea life. After talking about the story of the poor turtle, the topic of

plastic waste in food catering was brought up, and it was inspired somewhat by the first

academic article, but the CNBC article “Plastic waste surges as coronavirus prompts restaurants

to use more disposable packaging” also inspired some of the points made. For almost the last

year, we’ve been living in the pandemic, and as the article states, “As the country re-opens after

9
Rachael Meyer, “The Ocean Cleanup successfully collects ocean plastic, aims to scale design.”
news.mongabay.com (October 28, 2019).
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/10/the-ocean-cleanup-successfully-collects-ocean-plastic-aims-to-scale-design/
10
Ana Lisa, “Peanut: The Story Behind a Poor Turtle Deformed by a Six-Pack Ring” Inhabitat.com (March
20, 2013). https://inhabitat.com/peanut-the-story-behind-the-poor-sea-turtle-deformed-by-a-six-pack-ring/
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months of lockdowns, consumers and restaurants have become more dependent on single-use

plastic bags, containers and utensils due to health concerns prompted by the coronavirus

pandemic11.” Plastic use has become even worse over the last year since single use items have

become popularized again due to the pandemic, and this carried in even more inspiration for the

story. The correlation between these three non-academic articles is that they are all simple

articles to read with a clear message that relates to the academic article’s point. With the

inspiration of all three of these articles, the genre translation was made. While they don’t reach

the same audience as the academic article does, they still reach the same discourse community of

Environmental Science, and they also have the purpose of reaching a broader audience.

In order to accomplish the goal of translating Riccardo Accorsi et al.’s academic article,

the focus was to recognize the main, underlying idea of article, which was accomplishing better

environmental sustainability and create awareness and change, and to create a story with this

idea that also used other points of the academic article, such as involvement of the food catering

business. The reason for writing a mildly dramatic short story was to approach a broader

audience - everyone has read or listened to a story like the one that was written. In the story, the

primary setting was the ocean, and while the academic article does not have a particular place in

which it’s written, it’s well known that much of the plastic waste in the world eventually finds its

way into the ocean. The biggest part of the academic article that is left out in the story are the

calculations, graphs, and charts that were talked about being the main points of evidence. The

reason why these can be left out is because they do not find a place in a dramatic story. Most of

11
Amelia Lucas, “Plastic waste surges as coronavirus prompts restaurants to use more disposable
packaging.” CNBC.com (June 28, 2020).
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/28/coronavirus-plastic-waste-surges-as-restaurants-use-more-disposable-packaging.
html
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the time, numbers by themselves cannot evoke emotions or actions - it is usually visual cues or

words. This is why the climax and main point was about the poor turtle, and this phenomenon is

common when looking at other commercials that are looking to raise awareness. Their particular

motive is to show visually explicit images in order to get the audience’s attention.

In any translation of any sort, the people who are translating a piece have the main

concern of making sure that they do not sway too far away from the main focus of the original

piece. Whether it be translating words from other languages or translating one strategy to the

next, the concern of the translator is to make sure that it is a clear translation. The two assigned

readings from the class that gave me the confidence in order to translate the article correctly were

the “Mad Max: Fury Road, Retold Through Hieroglyphs Is Perfect” article by Andrew Liptak,

and “LITERARY GENRE TRANSLATIONS” by Cirocco Dunlap. When thinking about writing

the article, I did not know how far I could go in terms of creativity before reading Liptak’s article

and looking at the images made by people. Even though the article just consists of drawings, as

Liptak says, “it really captures the movie well12,” and this is the biggest point of this article.

Knowing that even images can be validated as a genre translation gave me the confidence to use

the picture of Peanut, the turtle, in my genre translation, thus making the translation stronger.

Furthermore, Dunlap’s article also gave me the inspiration to write a dramatic short story in the

first person point of view, since the original academic article was anything from dramatic.

Reading not just the example of dramatizing the phrase “I ate a sandwich and looked out the

window13” but also all the other translations let me know of all the possibilities that can take

12
Andrew Liptak, “Mad Max: Fury Road, Retold Through Hieroglyphs Is Perfect.” gizmodo.com (August
29, 2015). https://io9.gizmodo.com/mad-max-fury-road-retold-through-hieroglyphics-is-per-1727477739
13
Cirocco Dunlap, “Literary Genre Translations.” mcsweeneys.net (November 28, 2011).
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/literary-genre-translations
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place with a genre translation, and I feel that putting all those ideas together helped to come up

with mine.

Bibliography

Accorsi, Riccardo, Alessandro Cascini, et al. “Economic and environmental assessment of

reusable plastic containers: A food catering supply chain case study.” International Journal

of Production Economics, no. 152 (2014): 88-101.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2013.12.014.

Meyer, Rachael. “The Ocean Cleanup Successfully Collects Ocean Plastic, Aims to Scale

Design.” Mongabay Environmental News (October 28, 2019):

https://news.mongabay.com/2019/10/the-ocean-cleanup-successfully-collects-ocean-plasti

c-aims-to-scale-design/.

Lucas, Amelia. “Plastic Waste Surges as Coronavirus Prompts Restaurants to Use More

Disposable Packaging.” CNBC. CNBC (June 28, 2020):

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/28/coronavirus-plastic-waste-surges-as-restaurants-use-mo

re-disposable-packaging.html.

Lisa, Ana. “Peanut: The Story Behind a Poor Turtle Deformed by a Six-Pack Ring.” Inhabitat

Green Design Innovation Architecture Green Building (March 20, 2013):

https://inhabitat.com/peanut-the-story-behind-the-poor-sea-turtle-deformed-by-a-six-pack-

ring/.
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Liptak, Andrew. “Mad Max: Fury Road, Retold Through Hieroglyphs Is Perfect.” io9. io9

(December 16, 2015):

https://io9.gizmodo.com/mad-max-fury-road-retold-through-hieroglyphics-is-per-1727477

739.

Dunlap, Cirocco. “Literary Genre Translations.” McSweeney's Internet Tendency (November 28,

2011): https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/literary-genre-translations.