The Great Garbage Audit 2016

written by Kerrigan, Maria and Owen

On Friday, Becky & Jen came to our school to work with us.  They helped us do a garbage audit.  We went to a tarp that had special name tags with jobs on them like organic (compost), landfill, reduce, reuse, drink containers and paper.  We picked our jobs!  Recycling had to use two bags because it had so much recycling!  We started with 13 bags of garbage, recycling and compost (one from each class!)  We sorted it into different categories.  There was alot of compost!!!  Some of it was disgusting!

We are trying to make good choices....so for reducing you could buy one big bag of crackers or taco chips and put them in individual snack containers for lunch.  You could do the same with yogurt. 

We used a scale at the end to weight the bags.  We were surprised with the numbers! 

At the end, the landfill tarp had only two kitchen bags of garbage and they were only half full.  We made good choices by not putting too many things in the landfill!  It's important to compost, reduce, reuse and recycle to keep our garbage level low!  We have to work together to do great things for our Earth!

Information about the Great Garbage Audit

by Mrs. Chapnick

The Set-up:

 

Garbage, recycling and compost was collected for a 24 hour period here at SSES and then taken into the gym to be sorted and weighed.

 

The Process:

 

The class was divided into groups where each student had a role. They were either the compost, landfill, reduce, recycling- paper products, recycling- beverage containers or reuse collectors. Garbage bags were emptied out onto tarps and the collectors went to work. The rubber gloves were appreciated! Once sorted, all of the collections were weighed.

 

Results:

 

Compost: 15.17kg (food scraps, buns-from soup day)

Recycling-Paper products: 14.77kg (paper sheets and scraps, cardboard, newspapers, magazines)

Recycling- Beverage containers: 12.21kg (rinsed and shaken out milk cartons, juice boxes)

Reuse: .70kg (sandwich plastic bags, plastic cutlery, popsicle sticks)

Reduce: .58kg (wrappers for food, cookies, granola bars, yogurt tubes, glue sticks)

Landfill: 2.55kg (straws, tops of food containers, Kleenex and paper towels)

 

What we learned:

 

SSES is doing a very good job of composting and recycling. We can do even better though! 

We need to Rethink!

How can we reduce our waste?

 

1-      We can use washable containers, buy in bulk and send food in reusable containers.

2-      Take uneaten food home again.

3-      Put lunch scraps in the compost pail (no meat or dairy), not the garbage can.

 

An audit will be performed again in the Spring. Let’s see if we can improve our numbers. 

We only have one Earth! 

Let us all do our part.