On April 16, Ms. Gadbois’ grade 5 class from Arrow Heights Elementary school in Revelstoke went on a field trip to two different sites that deal with waste created in Revelstoke.
The first stop of the trip was to the Landfill and Transfer station. After all the students piled onto the scale to get a class weight (1190 lbs, FYI ;), our tour leader took us over to have a look from afar of the marshalling piles for fridges and freezers, mattresses, propane tanks, yard waste, and others. We learned that we can bring hazardous waste for free disposal every Saturday, and if we no longer want something that is still usable, we can bring it to the “Re-use It” shed where someone else can take it free of charge. We then moved over across the road where the current active landfill is located, and we saw a piece of machinery moving garbage around.
We then hopped back onto the bus and headed to the bottle depot. Many of the students have visited the bottle depot in order to get money back for recyclable bottles and cans. But this time we were also allowed to venture into the back of the facility. Back here we saw pallets filled with electronics that will be shipped elsewhere to be dismantled so the metals can be taken out and made into something new. We learned that a semi-trailer truck takes a load of these electronics out of Revelstoke 3x a week! That seems like a lot of electronics for a small town. We also learned that we can come to the bottle depot and get used paint free of charge.
This was a great field trip in which the students were able to make a real connection of what happens when they throw something “away”, and also what happens when they take their recyclables to the bottle depot.
