Hume’s Grade 5 class has been investigating waste. What happens to all that stuff we throw “away” and just how much of our waste can be diverted from our local landfill by reducing, reusing, repairing, refusing, rethinking and recycling? We took a tour to find out more!
At the Nelson Leaf’s Bottle Depot, students learned about Product Stewardship and how to keep small appliances, electronics, light bulbs, chemicals, paint and refundable drink containers from entering the landfill- with one easy stop at the depot!
Students witnessed the careful management of material as it comes to the RDCK Transfer Stations. Here resources are sorted and diverted from the landfill helping to reduce our need to extract new raw materials. Once buried in the landfill, our stuff is preserved forever leaving future generations to live with our trash. With space for only another 30 years’ worth of waste at the Oostechenia Landfill, students realized how important it is to reduce what we throw away.
At the Brilliant Waste Management Facility our recyclables are collected, compacted and shipped off to be sorted in Spokane and Kelowna before being recycled in far off lands. The importance of cleaning packaging was obvious when students learned that bucket loads of recyclables end up in the landfill just because of one dirty peanut butter jar or greasy pizza box!
This class is inspired to reduce classroom garbage by recycling juice boxes, composting food waste and paper towels and by bringing home garbage from lunches to spark conversations about food packaging at home. Way to go Grade 5!
