Recycling at Circleville Elementary
Leading up to the recycling activity was a discussion on trash. Why we need to do something about it and how we can start to lessen the amount of trash we produce. According to the Southeastern Public Service Authority, a solid waste management agency, the average person throws out about 6 pounds of trash per day. That adds up to more than a ton of trash that each of us ends up throwing out every year. What are we going to do with all this trash. Certainly not bury it all in someone's back yard!
Most people are familiar with the 3 “R’s” – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle (I’ve been hearing some talk about adding another “R” – Repair). They are listed that way on purpose. Reduce is the first thing that we should do to deal with our trash problem. Reuse and Recycle are the second and third thing we should be doing. I think most people know a lot about the second and third solutions but they don't know as much about the first, Reduce, and that's the one we should be doing the most. It's the one less understood and more difficult to accomplish.
What does Reduce mean as far as our trash is concerned (I once heard one of my environmental education camp counselors say reducing our trash meant to put it into a compactor and make it smaller. – unfortunately that is not what it means and really does nothing to solve the trash problem)? It really means that we do things so that there is less trash made to begin with. That’s what makes it more difficult to accomplish. Having less trash made means that we all have to make things and buys things differently. H
Many of us like to eat junk food like potato chips, pretzels or cheese doodles. Here we see two different size packages that we can purchase. Buying one of these snacks creates more trash than buying the other. Which one results in more trash?
At first glance we’d think it's the bag on the right. Yes, it is smaller and when thrown away would be less trash than the package on the left (ah, you say “George, we can recycle it!” – yes it is plastic and theoretically recyclable, but in reality there isn’t a market or manufacturer that can do a business of recycling snack packages so even if you save the empty packages there’s no place to take them to be recycled) .
Let’s look deeper, though. If you got the package on the right for snack time and your mom or dad got the package on the left you’d cry out “Not fair!” Of course it wouldn’t be fair. Your dad or mom would end up with more snack. You would get 2 ounces of snack while your parents got 7 ounces (reading labels is very helpful).
What does this mean then as far the trash that you will throw into the garbage when you’re done eating the snacks. Let’s do the math; a large bag is 14 inches tall and 8 inches across. That means there would be 112 square inches of plastic going into the garbage. No, wait! There’d be twice that amount. Why? Because there are two pieces of plastic to make the bag, the piece in the front of the bag and the piece in the back. You’d be throwing into the garbage can 224 square inches of plastic.
Let’s look at the small bag. It measures 10 ½ inches tall and 5 ½ inches across which gives us an area of 57 ¾ square inches of plastic. Don’t forget we have to double that for the two pieces of plastic that make up the bag. So one of our little bags is 115 ½ square inches. But we have four of these small bags because we wanted to have the same amount of snacks as mom or dad. So we end up throwing into the trash can 462 square inches of plastic. Four hundred sixtytwo square inches is a lot more than 224 square inches!
Another way to think about this is to figure out (and it means more math) how much plastic there is for each ounce of snack. The large bag, 224 square inches, holds 7 ounces of snack. That means for every ounce of snack you’re throwing out 32 square inches of plastic. The smaller bag that holds 2 ounces is 115 ½ square inches. One ounce of snack from that bag would result in 57 ¾ square inches of plastic going into the trash. As they say, “You do the math!” When you do, you see that the big bag is better!
If we want to reduce the amount of trash we have to try to buy things that do not create more trash. To reduce the amount of plastic thrown into the garbage from snack bags means buying the snacks in large bags instead of small bags. That holds true for all kinds of packages; the larger size package has less packaging per unit volume than the small package.
Of course now mom and dad won’t let you bring the whole 7 ounce bag to school for snack. How will you solve that problem? Will your solution create more trash? Let me know.



