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Group Activities |
| Mapping the position of recycling bins. | Draw a map of the area you live in and the position of recycling bins and their type. Are all the recycling materials represented by its specific recycling bin? Are the recycling bins easy to reach by people living this area? |
| Find out how bulk buying can help reduce waste. | Measure the surface area of a small box of cereal. What is the ratio of the surface area to the weight? Now measure the surface area of a large box of cereals. What is the ratio? |
| How does waste react? | Try burying waste: 1. Collect different articles, such as a glass marble, a rubber ball, some pieces of polystyrene and some baking foil. 2. Find some natural substances such as fruit and paper. 3. Fill some flowerpots with soil, and bury a different material in each flowerpot. 4. Stick a label with the name of the material and the date on each flowerpot. 5. Now water the soil in the flowerpots. 6. After around one week, dig up the materials. Have they changed? The soil is full of small animals, microscopic bacteria, and minute vegetable substances (funghi) which feed on natural substances by breaking them up. These substances are then partly absorbed by the soil and partly used as food. Living creatures which feed on dead or decomposed organic material are called decomposers and the material is said to be biodegradable. But decomposers do not feed on man-made materials, and so these are not transformed, and they remain in the soil. |
| Hunting for decomposers! | 1. Collect dry leaves from under trees or hedges. 2. Put some damp kitchen paper into a glass jar and wrap a sheet of black paper around it. 3. Put a funnel into the jar and fill it with dry leaves. 4. Turn on a lamp, point it at the leaves and leave it on for several hours. The light will dry the leaves and the minute animals on them will try to move away from the heat of the light. Some of them will fall into the jar. 5. Remove the black paper and observe the animals that have fallen into the jar, using a magnifying glass. Draw the animals you can see and try to find out their names. 6. How many kinds of decomposers have you found? |
| The path of a product: from its birth to its death. | Make a diagram of the path of a product, from when it is manufactured to when it is recycled. What is gained? What is lost? |
| A well-informed detective | 1. Where does our waste end up, if it isn't recycled? Find out about the distribution and existence of refuse dumps around your town or city, or in the area you live in. 2. How many types of refuse container are there in your town or city? Are they all used or not? 3. Put forward your own idea of a campaign to make people aware of the waste recycling problem: suggest some new containers (different from the traditional "bell-shaped" containers) for differentiated refuse collection (e.g. for the different types of coloured glass or for batteries), or new collection points (e.g. in the chemist's for broken thermometers, and used cooking oil - restaurants have to take used oil to the refuse disposal). |
| Save energy! | Propose this game to your family in order to save more energy in the home. Decide on points to award or take away every time people use a household appliance or water. For example, award 1 point if people clean their teeth using water in a glass instead of leaving the tap on, 2 points if they always turn the lights off when they go out of a room, and so on. The points should be taken away if they do the opposite. Then every time someone gets 100 points, for example, they have the right to get a prize from the other members of the family. |
| Combat pollution! | Read the labels carefully on the products you buy, and find out whether or not they contain harmful substances, and what their level of biodegradability is. |
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Projects |
| Importance of Recycling | Recycle cans, bottles, plastic bags and newspapers. When you recycle, you send less trash to the landfill and you help save natural resources like trees, oil, and aluminum. |
| How much waste. | Ask everyone in your class to bring a kilogram of something to class tomorrow (rice, pasta, a litre of milk etc.) Put all the kilograms in the middle of the room. That is how much your classroom throws out every day. Now imagine how much is thrown out by your whole school, your village/town, your country, the European Union!! |
| What's in a rubbish bin? | Keep track of what goes in your rubbish bin at home every day for a week. Evaluate and record each item your family throws away by collecting, weighing, and categorizing them as recyclable, reusable, biodegradable, or rubbish. Do you already separate glass/plastic/paper out from the rest? Do you have a compost heap? In your list, is there anything that should not be there? How could you reduce, reuse, recycle... |
| Make you own compost! | If you don't have a garden, try and find someone who has, or you could even ask your school. Start the compost heap with a layer of leaves and some loose soil. Then, just add to it whenever you have anything that can go in the pile (see table in the text). Make sure you aerate the pile every few weeks to let air circulate and distribute moisture evenly. Don't be surprised by the heat or if you see worms - it means the compost is working! You could continue the project by comparing how plants grow with the same amount of moisture and light but different amounts of compost. |
| Improve your differentiated refuse collection system | Starting in your home. Subdivide your waste-bin into different parts, each for a specific type of waste (organic waste, paper, glass, plastic, and aluminium etc.), or use different waste-bins for each of them. |
| What about glass? | Try not to buy drinks in cans. Instead buy drinks in glass bottles, because the bottles can be used again. When you go on a trip use thermos flasks or bottles that can be used again. If there's a can bank close to your home, take your cans there for recycling. Wash them out and crush them well so that they'll take up less space and won't give off nasty smells. |
| How to make home-made recycled paper. | Learn how to make home-made recycled paper! This is all you need: a mould made of mesh mounted on a wooden frame, a blender, a bowl and lots of old newspapers. a. Take the newspapers and tear them into lots of small pieces the size of a postage stamp, and liquidise them with some water. b. Pour everything into the bowl and mix it well with a wooden spoon so that you get a smooth mixture. c. Then immerse the mould in the bowl so that it is completely covered by the liquid. d. Keep the mould horizontal and lift it out of the bowl, shaking it back and forth to free it of the water. e. Pour the sheet of paper formed in this way onto a thin layer of damp tea-towels and cover it with another tea-towel. f. Continue making a pile of as many sheets as you want. g. Put the pile under a press or simply under a heavy layer of books. h. Pull the paper away from the tea-towels once it has dried out. |
| Combat pollution! | Reduce your consumption of "throwaway" products, as they are manufactured using products that are often pollutants, with a big waste of energy. Instead try to use the same product several times, until it can't be used anymore (e.g. plastic bags, bottles and cardboard boxes etc.). |
