Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

Let’s enter a contest!

We need to learn a little first… Reduce: To minimize the amount of energy and waste. Reuse: To repurpose materials. Recycle: the process to convert (waste) into reusable material.

The landfill: write your reactions to this picture, how does it make you feel?

Watch this… 8-really-big-things-americas-landfills-video.htm 8-really-big-things-americas-landfills-video.htm

Let’s learn about trash Put the following in order from the shortest decomposition to longest. Aluminum can, banana, cigarette butt, cotton rag, glass bottle, leather boot, paper bag, plastic 6 pack rings, plastic jug, rubber sole of boot, Styrofoam cup, tin can, wool sock

Take a look at this Banana: 3-4 weeks Paper bag: 1 month Cotton rag: 5 months Wool Sock: 1 year Cigarette butt: 2-5 years Leather boot: years Rubber sole: years Tin can: years Aluminum can: years Plastic 6 pack rings: 450 years Plastic jug: 1 million years Styrofoam cup- unknown? Forever? Glass bottle: unknown? Forever?

Garbage lasts William Rathje is a “garbologist”. He is the founder and Director of the Garbage Project, which conducts archaeological studies of modern trash. This University of Arizona professor and his students have been collecting data about solid waste since Rathje and his team found newspapers from the late 1970s that were still readable. Rathje’s research also shows that for some kinds of organic garbage biodegradation (the rotting process) works for a while and then slows down or stops. For other kinds, it never starts to break down at all. Rathje and his team of garbologists plan to conduct more digs to find out why paper and other organic waste degrade slowly in landfills. “It’s not a pleasant task,” Rathje says, “but someone has to do it.”

How does waste decompose? Organic substances “biodegrade” when they are broken down by other living organisms (such as enzymes and microbes) into their constituent parts, and in turn recycled by nature as the building blocks for new life. The process can occur aerobically (with the aid of oxygen) or anaerobically (without oxygen). Substances break down much faster under aerobic conditions, as oxygen helps break the molecules apart.

How does it work (cont.) Let’s say you took a piece of wood and burned it. What you would be left with is a little pile of ash. The same is true if you burned a piece of paper, a bale of hay, a big handful of cotton, etc. It’s even true if you cremate a human body. The ash is nothing but the minerals that cannot be consumed by fire – things like calcium and potassium. When something decomposes, it is broken down not by fire, but by microorganisms and insects. If you leave a piece of wood on the forest floor, termites, carpenter ants, beetles and bacteria will dismantle the piece of wood little by little. They use the same carbon and hydrogen bonds that fuel the fire to fuel their bodies. They incorporate the minerals into their own bodies. And eventually nothing is left. When an animal dies, a host of worms, maggots, beetles, ants and bacteria use the rotting body as food, until nothing but the bones are left. And the bones eventually turn to calcium dust and are re-absorbed by other plants and animals.

Will landfills fill up? In just 16 years, from 1979 to 1995, the number of landfills dropped by 84%, while the amount of trash generated increased by 80%. Only two human-made structures on Earth are large enough to be seen from outer space: the Great Wall of China and the Fresh Kills landfill, located on the western shore of Staten Island! Every year we fill enough garbage trucks to form a line that would stretch from the earth, halfway to the moon. Every hour, Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles.

What can we do? Think of what you have put in the trash can today: could it have been recycled instead or composted? Biodegradable goods take much longer (up to 30 years for a newspaper) to decompose when buried in landfills, as the necessary amount of oxygen is lacking.

Recycle A used aluminum can is recycled and back on the grocery shelf as a new can, in as little as 60 days. If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year! Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year! The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle can run a 100-watt light bulb for four hours or a compact fluorescent bulb for 20 hours. It also causes 20% less air pollution and 50% less water pollution than when a new bottle is made from raw materials.

Lansing offers free recycling!

What is the impact? A record 2700 tons of recycling was collected in This represents an over 40% increase since the City switched to the single stream collection method in mid Here’s a breakdown of the environmental benefits: 17,804,746 gallons of water saved 13, 532, 796 kWh of energy saved 7828 metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent GHG emissions saved 40,935 trees saved 304,817 pounds of natural resources, such as sand, soda ash and limestone saved 435,965 tons of bauxite and iron ore saved 1,102,711 gallons of gasoline saved

Watch this… embedded&v=l19RfqR1FIc embedded&v=l19RfqR1FIc

Now it’s your turn… Think of ways we can reduce, reuse, or recycle at school. Make a poster to advertise the importance or recycling.