Waste Audit

This picture is of some trash that some students acquired and brought out to examine. The first thing that you notice when looking at this picture is that there are a lot of different recyclables all mixed together in one bag. There are paper, plastics, and cans that could have been taken out sorted and recycled into new materials.


This picture is showing students weigh garbage and show how many pounds of garbage are consumed in a number of hours. Just imagine how much garbage is consumed in one day? All this garbage we're making is actually recyclables we could make into new materials.

What students did in this picture was pour a bag of garbage on a plastic tarp to examine the different pieces of trash.

This picture shows how students sorted the recyclables from the garbage. You can see there are just paper and plastic in this photo. Things that you would usually see in a bag of trash is situated together to be further sorted and recycled.

Classrooms can help reduce consumption and disposal of materials by having a certain box or garbage can just meant for recyclables. For instance, if every class in the school just had a big cardboard box next to the trash I bet there would be more recycling going on than there is now. The 4R's could be applied to the materials found in the trash mostly by recycling, reusing, and rotting. For example, the plastics, paper, etc. can be recycled; plastic bottles could be reused; and the food that we don't eat or throw away can be rotted down into a compost pile to help put nutrients back into the soil and make fertilizer.

The specific materials the class should focus on is paper and plastic because that's mostly what classrooms deal with. When students no longer need certain paper that has already been graded or written on we could recycle it, instead of throwing it away. Also the plastic that usually comes off of teachers new materials or plastic bottles from people drinking water or juice can be recycled and made into new bottles.