Recycling Awareness

Recycling is a very good thing that we as people should take into consideration.Recycling helps the community in many ways and if more people took the time and patience to simply put their recyclables where it's needed there wouldn't be such a problem. Recycling not only affects us as people but it affects the wildlife and the ecosystem. Learnin about the 4R's throughout these past couple of weeks has been an inspiration. I learned a lot of interesting facts on how to help and not hurt my backyard community.
Recycling at school has now become a big interest to me. I try and make sure if have anything that can be recycled that I would usually throw away finds its way to a recycle bin. Recycling and reusing at T-High has actually got better I see a lot more people putting things in the trash(even though it could be recycled) instead of on the ground. Also, there are a lot more teachers that now have recycling bins for students in their classrooms.

Davis Street Transfer Center

The purpose of the Davis Street Transfer Center is to bring all recyclables there and and crush them into squares to be further made into new plastic, paper, or aluminum materials. The Davis Street Transfer Center is a great help to the community because it's a local place just to recycle and get rid of litter that could be in the streets and places they don't belong. The Center is overwhelmed with materials that will be made into something new.

This picture is of some workers at the landfill in the transfer center.
This picture is of the the recyclables after they have been crushed and ready to be reused.
This picture is an up close of the cubes of recyclables.

Tennyson High School Farm/Compost Pile

The Tennyson High compost pile our class created on 4-11-08 was very exciting and fun. This was something I had never done before. What we did as a class was we took a trip down to one of our fields that we use for farming and used: twigs,leaves,grass clippings, succulent plant matter, old compost, and water to make a 4ft. wide 4ft. long 4ft. high pile of compost. The class helped to make the pile and did different chores to help meet the measurements which was the tricky part. However, by working together we were able to do just that. my role and responsibilities for making the compost pile was spraying water from the hose on the compost pile. A compost pile is used to help break things like old plant matter and uneaten food into soil or fertilizer. This helps benefit because this is fertilizer and soil that is organic. To make a compost pile you lay down all of the ingredients I named but add water in between all of them. It takes at least 2 weeks to completely turn into soil or fertilizer.

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.

Litter Survey

Students completed this activity by taking different pictures of places like hallways, the quad, and the front of the school. First students took pictures to show how much trash there was before lunch, and then after lunch, took pictures of the same places. Obviously it is very clean and litter free before lunch. There is no trash visible what so ever. This photo that is shown is of the administration wing at Tennyson High School before lunch, just from this picture Tennyson looks like a very well kept school.

This picture that is shown is of the same administration wing but after lunch. There is a great amount of trash on the ground. Most of it is paper and plastic. Students have a weird way of recycling and throwing things away at school. They feel like the floor is the biggest trash bag in the world. There are napkins and forks from different people's lunch just thrown everywhere.

Recycling @ Home

The way that I practice the 4R's at home is by reusing. I give some of my old clothes to my sister, like t-shirts and tank tops. Just things that I can no longer fit anymore. Next to my dumpster at my apartment we have 3 trash bins just for paper and since my mom and I shred most of our stuff we just take it downstairs to the trash bins for paper and dump it in there.

SLWRP @ Tennyson

The purpose of this blog is to inform people of the recycling that is going on at Tennyson High School. At Tennyson High School we have recycling boxes in certain class rooms to throw away cans, papers, or plastics. Then down in the field we have a place to help things rot and return nutrients to the soil.Although, this is all new to Tennyson we barely have any type of recycling habit here even though we really should because we have a huge trash problem. The 4 R's are: Recycle, Reduce, Reuse, and Rot. Recycling is easy you take things that can be used again and help them be made into everyday things. To reduce all you have to do is try not to make trash in the first place. To practice reusing you just take things like clothes or shoe sand give them to people that can make good use of them once again.Tennyson students need to get involved in recycling because they could really help make a difference.