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NAME OF GREEN NINJA VIDEO: The Green Team
MAIN TOPIC OF VIDEO: School recycling programs
Click HERE to watch this episode! (Link)
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Frame:
1. What do you see being thrown away in the garbage cans at school? For example,
compare what goes into your classroom garbage can to what goes into the cafeteria
garbage can.
2. What do you, personally, throw in the garbage can at school?
3. Where does the trash go after you throw it away?
4. What goes into your garbage can at home?
Focus:
1. Why doesn’t Dustin separate his trash?
2. What is a benefit of recycling?
3. What does it mean to be compostable?
4. What trash has to go into the landfill?
5. What should you do with any unconsumed liquids?
Follow-up:
1. What could you change about your school waste program?
2. Draw or look at a map of your school. Where would you put: recycling bins,
compost bins, trash bins, liquid bins?
3. How many of each type of bin would you place in the locations you chose?
4. Create an informative sign that explains to the other students in your school how to
separate out recyclable trash from compost and landfill trash.
5. Take an inventory of your school lunch—what waste are you generating and how
can you reduce that amount?
ANSWERS TO DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Frame:
1. Answers will vary depending on student experience. Classroom waste can include
things such as paper, broken pens/pencils, paper towels, empty glue containers.
Lunch room waste contains more food than classroom waste and more wet
containers.
2. Answers will vary. Wrappers from granola bars, sandwich bags, chip bags, juice
containers, etc.
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3. Roughly 65.5% of our waste currently goes into a landfill. From the EPA website:
In 2012, Americans generated about 251 million tons of trash and recycled and
composted almost 87 million tons of this material, equivalent to a 34.5 percent
recycling rate. On average, we recycled and composted 1.51 pounds of our
individual waste generation of 4.38 pounds per person per day.
The graph below gives information about the US recycling rates of a few selected
products.
4. Answers will vary. Packaging from food, dinner scraps, cardboard boxes, fast food
containers, etc.
Focus:
1. He believes that all trash is the same and/or he doesn’t know how to sort it.
2. Items that are recycled can be made into new products. Recycling helps minimize
the amount of new material that has to be created or mined from the earth. For
example, recycling aluminum cans reduces the need to mine for new aluminum.
3. Composting can be done on any biodegradable product, like food scraps and paper.
Composting allows soil microbes and/or worms to break down waste naturally. The
time it takes to compost (or break down) materials completely can vary depending
on the environmental conditions of the compost. See this additional Green Ninja
video on worm bins for more information.
4. The trash that has to go into a landfill will vary depending on location. For example,
the City of San Jose, CA has an online guide to recycling here. Some items that
cannot be recycled or composted include: soiled paper, padded envelopes, takeout food containers, diapers, pet waste, packing peanuts, carpet, hangers, pillows
and more.
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5. Unconsumed liquids can be thrown into a liquid bin or regular trash bin. The
container can then either be recycled or composted, depending on the type of
container.
Follow-up:
1. Answers will vary. Some schools might already have established programs, while
others might not. In general, students might want to implement the same type of
program as seen in the video, with containers for recycling, composting and liquids
in addition to the standard trash cans that go to the landfill. Maybe students want to
begin with recycling and build a program from there.
2. Answers will vary. Students might want to start out by putting all types of bins in the
cafeteria or eating area, since those places get a lot of compostable and recyclable
trash. Students might take a walking tour of the school in order to generate their
map and the locations of the pre-existing trash cans/recycling/compost bins.
3. Answers will vary. Composting might only be around eating areas, while recycling
bins might go into every classroom.
4. Answers will vary according to student interest--see example below.
5. Answers will vary. Students might notice that they have a lot of wrappers and
plastic bags. They can ask their parents to buy foods in bulk and use reusable
containers made out of plastic, glass or fabric. They might start to use a reusable
water bottle.
ADDITIONAL TOPICS AND LEARNING EXPERIENCES
Here is a large classroom activity guide to teaching about waste called Reduce, Reuse,
Recycle and Rot.
Introduce students to the concept of a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). From the American
Chemical Society curricular unit on LCA: LCA investigates every part of the production, use
and final disposition of a product, including collection and processing of raw materials, energy
used in production and use of the product, and transportation and disposal or recycling costs.
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LCA is an assessment that is useful when considering the benefits of recycling because it
can help students see the amount of energy and effort that is put into the creation of a
brand new product and how much energy can be saved through recycling.
The curricular unit linked above has many useful resources and graphics on Life Cycle
Analysis, including this one pertaining to aluminum cans:
Here is a lesson plan for a life cycle analysis from the teachengineering.org website,
complete with student handout and ITSE and NGSS standard correlations.
Ask students to form groups and create a school recycling proposal. Each group will
present their proposal to the class when they are finished.
ADDITIONAL NOTES AND RESOURCES
There are many online resources to help you get a recycling program started at your
school. A few are here:
From The Carroll County Government in Maryland
From the Virginia Recycling Association
From the Los Angeles Department of Public Works
Credit: This teacher resource has been adapted from content originally developed by
Lee Pruett.