Dr. Dumpster came to the grade 4/5/6 class at Lucerne this week to discuss the science and art of garbology. She had just returned from Hawaii where her family wanted to play on the beach, but she wanted to dig through dumpsters to discover the history of garbage in Hawaii and also see what was wasted by locals and tourists alike. This was a very fun lesson, and the students tried their best to determine Dr. Dumpsters true identity throughout the class. Thanks to their teacher, Katrina Sumrall, the students are very knowledgeable and conscientious when it comes to composting and recycling. Her class is in charge of collecting compost and waste for the entire school, so there is little waste in Katrina’s class. Dr. Dumpster collected the trash bins from the secondary lounge, to compare it with that in the 4/5/6 class. As food waste is a large component of trash, a discussion about how much Canadians waste was a component of the garbology lesson. Early in the month, CBC did a piece on this, and there is a short clip which explains it well (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/09/28/food-waste-report.html). The study reveals that every Canadian wastes 300 kg of edible food a year, which adds up to 27 billion dollars worth of wasted food! We talked about how the information from the study related to our garbological findings.
