Planet Earth Pages
Waste Reduction
This issue's Planet Earth Pages were written by a
team from the Halton Board of Education in Ontario: Al Finlayson,
Joanne Harris, Ron Ballentine and Marilyn Bray.
"materialism places an unacceptable
strain on natural resources, so it must become unthinkable to
waste. It must become fashionable to conserve... to devote
one's energy and time to the repairing and sustaining of the
earth..."
- W.A. Andrews, 1992
This issue's Planet Earth Pages feature
activities that focus on waste reduction in the school and
community. The ideas are divided into grade level categories, but
there may be suitable activites in one of the adjacent categories
that can be adapted to your class. Have a look and judge for
yourself!
- Solution Songs
- Listen to a variety of environmental music and songs (for
example, Dan Gibson, Ronno, Raffi, Kim and Jerry Brodey).
Alternatively, make several visits to listen to the
sounds in natural areas. Then have students work in small
groups with adults or older students to create and record
a song about reducing garbage. They can write new lyrics
for a familiar tune or create their own melodies (a small
electronic keyboard makes this even more enjoyable). They
may also wish to record sounds from natural areas and add
those to their recording.
- Poster Power
- Have small groups or individual students create posters
containing one or more ideas for reducing the amount of
garbage we make. The posters could illustrate before and
after, or positive and negative; they could be a collage
of photos, drawings, words and objects. A good lead-up to
this is to have the class watch videos, such as Seven
Ways to a Greener Planet, 50 Simple Things
Kids Can Do To Save The Planet, Changes: An
Environmental Lifestyle, or go on a field trip to
a landfill or recycling centre.
- Choose Your Own Future
- After reading or listening to many stories about garbage
or other waste problems, have children create interactive
"choose your adventure" stories. The stories
begin with a problem related to garbage and then give
readers a choice of two or more possible solutions. Each
solution leads to a different story path which shows a
consequence of the choice and may lead to more decisions
and choices for the reader. These stories could be
published in a variety of ways including audio
recordings, big books, individual author's books, or
Hypercard stacks.
- Play Power
- Have students create and perform short skits on the theme
of waste reduction. This works well with adult helpers or
skilled junior students as "co-writers" and
"directors." Make sure there is lots of time to
develop and practice the piece, and that students have
the opportunity to perform it for an audience such as a
lunch time gathering of several other classes or a full
school Earth or International Environment Day Assembly.
- Waste Walk
- Have students take "waste walks" around the
school and neighbourhood searching for "garbage hot
spots" and "garbage-free zones." Older
children can create maps of the community and mark these
spots as they go. Afterwards, organize a litter clean-up
at the hot spots and create colourful door hangers,
buttons or cards to recognize individual homes or
businesses that are "garbage-free zones."
- Techno-Trash
- This project links the concept of reuse with children's
love of taking apart and building things. Gather a
donated (or cheaply purchased) collection of used or
broken appliances, car parts, or other machines. Have the
children use tools to take apart the items, and then
reassemble them or build new creations. Parents or other
adults from the community can be recruited to assist
students and ensure that materials are handled safely.
Have older children draw a plan of their creation and
describe what it is and what it does.
- Design a Container
- Have students design and make a container that
helps them to organize their personal belongings,
such as a pencil case, book bag or desk top
organizer. To promote the concepts of recycling
and reuse, have students either make the
containers from used materials, or think of a
container (such as a paper lunch bag) that they
would ordinarily use only once, and design a
reusable model (such as a cloth bag).
- Green Holidays
- Reuse as many materials as possible when
celebrating holidays that occur during the school
year. Make new cards from old cards and wrapping
paper. Make new wrapping paper and gift envelopes
by decorating good-on-one-side paper with paint
and other scraps of cloth or paper. Reuse scrap
materials to create holiday crafts. Have a gift
exchange in which students pick names and bring a
toy or game from home as their gift. For hundreds
of other garbage free holiday ideas, see The
New Green Christmas by The Evergreen
Alliance, ISBN 1-879904-00-4.
- Multimedia Mission
- With appropriate preparation by teachers,
students can create multimedia presentations to
raise awareness of and offer solutions to
problems related to garbage. Stories, poetry,
drawings, still photographs, laser disk or CD-ROM
segments, and even video clips can be put
together into very effective presentations using
such software as Hypercard.
- Past and Present
- Have students generate questions about past and
present attitudes toward waste. Are people
concerned? Are they taking personal action?
Should more be done by government leaders? Have
them interview grandparents, parents and other
adults to find out how people dealt with waste in
the past. Using the information collected, have a
class debate on the issue of waste.
- Environmental Buddies
- Have students pair up so that each has one or
more environmental buddies. At least once a week,
schedule a morning or afternoon for them to get
together for a variety of activities from reading
stories related to environmental protection to
taking on a project to help the environment. Give
students a variety of choices and allow them to
suggest projects. Some possibilities are litter
cleanups, habitat revitalization, and
environmental awareness projects such as letter
writing or "yellow fish" storm drain
marking.
- Waste Audit
- Do a schoolwide waste audit. Start by having
students walk about the school to survey waste
collection areas (lunchroom, office, classrooms,
etc.). Then assign a student team to audit each
area to record the types of waste found. For each
major type of waste that could be reduced (paper,
compostable food, etc.), create a chart with the
headings "Problems" and "Possible
Solutions." Under "Problems,"
students record the observations they have made
while doing the audit, (i.e. children playing
with paper towels, throwing away half eaten
fruit, etc.). Have students take their charts to
other classes, present the problems, and record
ideas from classes under "Possible
Solutions." Have each team rank the
solutions for each problem found in their area
and use a webbing format to design a work plan to
implement them. Headings should include Who,
What, How, When, Where. Present the work plans to
the rest of the class for evaluation and
suggestions. Then prepare and present the work
plan to the school, class by class, through
posters, signs, talks, skits, and demonstrations.
- Landfill Visit
- Visit the local landfill site, municipal
recycling depot, sewage or water treatment plant,
or hazardous waste depot to investigate how waste
is managed in your community. Create flow charts
to illustrate these processes, and identify the
stages at which individual actions can have an
impact.
- Adopt a Site
- Visit a local natural area and record
observations about its ecological functioning.
Create and implement an action plan that helps
minimize the impact of waste on your adopted
ecosystem.
- Environmental Collage
- As part of the study of waste management, use
"found" materials to create a collage
that expresses an environmental theme.
- Make Something of It!
- Children in less developed countries of the world
are very capable of turning a piece of
"junk" into a toy that will provide
hours of play. Have students research types of
games from around the world, and then design and
create their own game or toy using
"found" material. Reference: Games
of the World: How to make them; how to play them;
how they came to be. Available through
UNICEF offices or Plenary Publications
International Incorporated, 300 East 40 Street,
New York, NY 10016.
- Waste Management Success Stories
- Read the article about waste reduction success
stories in Green Teacher 41,
(December 1994-January 1995). Identify four
features of each school's program as described in
the article. Collate the information in a chart
and then select the features that you could use
in your school to lead to improved waste
reduction.
- It's in the News!
- Over a period of time, have students monitor your
local or regional newspaper for news,
advertising, feature articles and editorials that
pertain to the environmental 4Rs. Use the
information to assess how sensitive your
community is to these issues. Offer to write an
article for the local newspaper about initiatives
your school is undertaking in waste management.
- Surf the Net
- Access the Internet to send out a message asking
other schools what initiatives they have
undertaken to encourage the use of the
environmental 4Rs in their schools. Collate the
replies you receive. Make a display that
indicates where the information originated and
how it could be used in your school.
- Graph Your Garbage
- Monitor the types and quantities of garbage
produced in your school. Graph this information
and use this baseline data to identify possible
areas for improvement in waste reduction efforts.
After a specified period of time, measure the
garbage production again and graph the results.
Compare the "before" and
"after" data to determine if your waste
reduction campaign was successful.
- Resource Reuse
- Have students bring an item of clothing or
furniture from home that needs repair,
remodelling or rejuvenation. Complete the repair
so that the item can be used again.
- Community Exchange
- Organize a games and toys exchange at your
school. Promote the activity through your
community school council. If it is organized as a
money-making venture, select an appropriate use
for the money raised.
- Career Awareness
- Have students job shadow a garbage collector,
blue box truck operator, waste management
consultant or others with jobs related to the
environment. Determine what education path was
required for these careers and their importance
to society. Speculate about possible future
careers in this area.
- Media Study
- Investigate the mass media's awareness and
portrayal of waste issues. Are they part of the
problem? Can they be part of the solution?
- Multimedia Presentation
- Prepare a multimedia presentation related to the
issue of waste management.
- Research
- Have students review waste reference sources in
their school resource centre. Determine areas
deficient in information and take steps to locate
and obtain data to fill the identified needs:
Locate Internet sites, write to provincial/state
departments of environment, contact environmental
organizations.
- Fashion Arts
- Using good design principles, design and
construct garments from reused materials (e.g.
fabric scraps, old ties). Plan, publicize and
carry out a "green" fashion show.
- Packaging
- Analyze the role of packaging in our society as
it relates to the accumulation of waste.
- Where Does it Go?
- Investigate the processes by which materials that
are recycled are used to manufacture new
materials.
- Personal Action
- Have students conduct a personal/home lifestyle
waste audit. Determine how their homes can become
less wasteful. Develop and carry out an action
plan to make the necessary changes.
- Global Perspective
- Investigate issues related to waste management
from a global perspective. How does one nation's
waste affect other nations? How do rich and poor
countries compare in types and amounts of waste
generated and methods of waste management?
The Planet Earth Pages were written by a team from
Halton Board of Education in Ontario, including Al
Finlayson, Joanne Harris, Ron Ballentine and Marilyn
Bray.