In order to truly appreciate how much waste our society produces we need to actually see it. This is hard in our society which clears away waste daily and has it removed by the council garbage truck weekly. Imagine if we had to see our yearly waste by actually having 52 garbage bins in our yard. So even though it is messy I think that auditing our waste for a week is one of the most powerful things we can do as sustainable teachers.
There are many websites that give instructions on conducting a waste audit. Coolaustralia.org has both a litter audit and a school wide waste audit. Cool Australia has a free registration for teachers. I have also seen a waste audit done by emptying the school garbage bin onto a tarp and providing all students with rubber gloves to sort the rubbish into piles.
However my technique is to collect all the rubbish for a week. Separating it at the time into paper/cardboard, organics/food waste, metal, soft plastic, recyclable plastic, glass and landfill. In a classroom this would mean encouraging students to bring back from recess and lunch all their waste rather than place it in an outside bin (otherwise your data is going to be skewed away from organics and plastics). Every day weigh each of the categories and add data to the table. Keep the rubbish in labelled cardboard boxes at the back of the room. Keep food waste in sealed plastic containers. I have done this process both myself at home and while teaching.
My teaching waste audit was done in a homeschooling situation however in a classroom you have two choices either audit the amount of waste generated by your class over a week, or get students to collect the data at home for homework.
There are many websites that give instructions on conducting a waste audit. Coolaustralia.org has both a litter audit and a school wide waste audit. Cool Australia has a free registration for teachers. I have also seen a waste audit done by emptying the school garbage bin onto a tarp and providing all students with rubber gloves to sort the rubbish into piles.
However my technique is to collect all the rubbish for a week. Separating it at the time into paper/cardboard, organics/food waste, metal, soft plastic, recyclable plastic, glass and landfill. In a classroom this would mean encouraging students to bring back from recess and lunch all their waste rather than place it in an outside bin (otherwise your data is going to be skewed away from organics and plastics). Every day weigh each of the categories and add data to the table. Keep the rubbish in labelled cardboard boxes at the back of the room. Keep food waste in sealed plastic containers. I have done this process both myself at home and while teaching.
My teaching waste audit was done in a homeschooling situation however in a classroom you have two choices either audit the amount of waste generated by your class over a week, or get students to collect the data at home for homework.
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In the process of doing this audit you will be covering parts of the following maths content:
Working Mathematically
Data
Mass
Volume
Addition
Multiplication
Percentages
as well as the Cross Curricular Priority of Sustainability.
Working Mathematically
Data
Mass
Volume
Addition
Multiplication
Percentages
as well as the Cross Curricular Priority of Sustainability.
After collecting this data we looked at what percentage of it was recyclable, how much waste the family had produced during the week, how much waste we produced per person per year (and compared it to the Australian average of 1.5 tonnes), how much we would produce if we recycled properly, thought about how our data could have been made more accurate (i.e. most of household garbage was not collected and weighed) and thought about ways to reduce the waste.
Problems we solved while doing this included the differences between gross and net weights (particularly important when weighing the food waste) and making sure our units were the same before adding or multiplying.
Things that we could have done include graphing the results and conducting another audit later in the year and hopefully seeing progress.
Problems we solved while doing this included the differences between gross and net weights (particularly important when weighing the food waste) and making sure our units were the same before adding or multiplying.
Things that we could have done include graphing the results and conducting another audit later in the year and hopefully seeing progress.
Interesting photo essays to look at include Gregg Segal's photographs of American families lying in a weeks rubbish and Peter Menzel's What the World Eats photos of a weeks groceries for families around the world. Look at the varying amounts of packaging and processed food.