Garbage Garbage! where does it all come from?

Where Does Your Garbage Go After It’s Collected

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They also examine their own ideas and habits about recycling and discover what a serious effect litter and mass waste disposal have on the environment. They should come to realize that recycling is one solution to limit this ongoing global problem. They learn about how recycling generally works, what kinds of products can be recycled, and what other valuable products recycled materials can be turned into. Young children should be given opportunities to study and manipulate many different kinds of materials, from clay and paper to metals and plastics. This allows them to begin learning about the properties that make up materials as well as about manufacturing.

This may also include identifying material properties and figuring out their suitability for different purposes. It is not too early for children to begin to wonder what happens to something after it has been thrown away. By the time they reach the grade level, students should already understand that some kinds of materials are better than others for making any particular thing, that several steps are usually involved in making things, and that some materials can be used over again. Working with products and investigating their base properties can help students discover the properties of various materials and begin to identify how people transform materials into useful objects.

Benchmarks for Science Literacy , pp. It will be helpful if students begin to see that advancements in technology over the years have led manufacturers to use some natural resources much more rapidly than they can be replenished. This includes both renewable and nonrenewable resources, which they will learn about in this series. Many forests worldwide, for example, have been gradually reduced, and ore deposits are being depleted. These kinds of threats to the environment have prompted the search for substitute materials and new methods and technology to recycle resources that can be renewed.

Nevertheless, given the overwhelming demand for manufactured goods globally—and the tons of trash it produces—the future welfare of the planet will depend heavily on how we develop, use, and restrict technology and our consumption habits.

Garbage Comes in Two Forms

Science for All Americans , pp. It is important to impress upon students at this early stage that one of the best ways for them to protect the environment is to make recycling a natural part of their everyday lives. Every plastic bottle, newspaper, or bag of garbage counts. While teaching, also keep in mind that research on student understanding of materials suggests that the tasks of classifying objects according to what they are made of and of comparing properties of materials can be challenging for early elementary-school children.

In addition, elementary-school children may have limited knowledge or hold misconceptions about the origins and transformations of materials. Benchmarks for Science Literacy , p. These items will need to be placed in a plastic bag, as if they are throwaway trash. Before the lesson begins, you will want to place this bag of trash in a class trash basket in front of the class. Begin the lesson by quietly walking over to the classroom trash bin. Grab students' attention and interest by rummaging around in the bin as if you're looking for something.

Then pull out the plastic bag you placed there before teaching this lesson. Once they recognize that it's trash, dump the contents of the bag on your desk and have the class identify the soda can, milk carton, glass bottle, beef product, and plastic bag itself. Continue the investigation by asking:.

Accept all reasonable answers. Encourage students to elaborate on their responses. After looking over the sheet and explaining the directions, encourage students to walk around the classroom or school looking for items that interest them. They can look anywhere—in garbage cans, on desks, or in their book sacks. As directed, in the first column they should list items whose composition they know and in the second column, items whose origins they are less certain and about which they would like to learn more.

When students are finished exploring and filling out their sheets, take time to discuss and compare their findings. On the blackboard, list several correct examples from each of the two categories. Help students come up with information on the composition of items they wonder about, such as how pencils are made from wood and lead. Make a point to include in this discussion each of the items from your trash bag plastic bag, milk carton, soda can, glass bottle, beef item to help prepare students for a discussion of different kinds of natural resources and a research activity in the Development section.

Use the discussion of students' findings as a basis for introducing and talking about the concepts of natural resources useful materials from the earth, such as coal, oil, natural gas, and trees , renewable resources resources that can be replenished at approximately the same rate at which they are used , and nonrenewable resources resources that become depleted more quickly than they naturally regenerate. This can be done by asking questions such as these:.

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Once students have a working understanding of what renewable and nonrenewable resources are and how they differ , erase the board and list these five resource categories: Some cities, like San Francisco and Seattle, are able to recycle more waste than they send to landfills, but the majority of the U. Beyond landfills, waste in the U.

Garbage 1: The Roots of Trash

Where does trash go after you throw it away? Transfer stations provide a temporary location for garbage trucks to drop off their waste cargo.

Once compacted and ready for transfer, the trash is loaded into larger trucks that will take it to its final destination, such as a landfill. This reduces costs and frees up regular garbage trucks to continue making pickups throughout the day. Material recovery facilities MRFs are locations where debris is sorted in order to recover useful materials from the waste stream before it reaches its final destination.

State-of-the-art MRFs incorporate a variety of technologies to achieve this such as magnets, shredders and current separators for sorting ferrous and non-ferrous metals. After our trash has made its way through the compactors and sorting machines it is taken to one of the following destinations where it will be stored, recycled or, in some cases, used to make energy:.

Just over 52 percent of the country's garbage ends up in one of more than 3, active landfills scattered throughout the U.

Landfills are designed to store waste, but not to break it down. They are lined with clay and covered in a flexible plastic skin. Drains and pipes crisscross each layer to collect leachate, a contaminated fluid created by garbage. As a layer fills, it is covered over with another sheet of plastic and topped with soil and plants. The layers of trash form hills.

Eventually, the garbage will decompose, but the process is slow in this oxygen-free environment. Roughly 35 percent of all solid waste goes to either a recycling or composting facility.

From Waste Disposal to Waste Collection

Recycling and composting operate under the same principle of reusing waste by turning it into new products. Recycling facilities generally focus on processing aluminum, plastics, paper and glass, while composters use food and agricultural waste to create compost for municipal and consumer use. Recycling and composting rates have increased annually since the early s, though growth rates have begun to slow. Despite this, some of the largest cities in the U. The top five recycling cities in the country divert 60 to 80 percent of their waste from landfills.

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Waste-to-energy plants, also known as trash incinerators, are large industrial furnaces designed to burn municipal solid waste. The primary combustion chambers of these facilities operate at a blistering 1, degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to turn any amount of trash to ash. This process reduces the original volume of the waste by 95 percent, significantly reducing the need for landfill space.

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