Recycling Awareness

We did this project in about two weeks time and I can say that I learned a lot from it. I didn't much care about the environment like many teens I know. I learned that if we recycled then the world would be a much cleaner place. I also learned that the items that I throw away could also be recycled. I also saw the extent of littering that we have seen at school and I feel that the school wouldn't look half bad as long as we don't litter. I didn't even know what compost was before we started and now I know that is an organic substitute for fertilizer and that it has no pesticides.
I didn't care about recycling and thought only to sell bottles for money like my family does sometimes. I now recycle whenever I can and it has changed my perspective of how I see the world . I could recycle boxes instead of throwing it away and I can also recycle the food scraps so that it can be made into compost. Around my house my parent always recycled and we didn't notice it because we did small things like by from thrift stores and sell bottles. This project really helped me get into recycling and through public awareness I believe that the public can get into the recycling habit too.
We at T-high have gotten together with our Leadership class and are going to get recycling bins for all our classrooms. The main thing that we are seeking top do is get our students aware of the problems with not recycling. The students are in a way responsible for the trash and we are trying to tell them to be cleaner. The program we are going to set up will make this school much cleaner and help the world.


For more information on the ways you can help contact them at:

The Davis Street Transfer Center is a waste treatment facility that serves 20 Bay Area cities. The facilities goal is to divert 75% of municipal trash away from landfills and into recyclable materials.

Davis Street Transfer Center

Recycle plastics and bottles
Recycle wood into garden mulch which fertilizes the ground
Process yard trimmings for compost
Recycle e-waste: old computers, electronic equipment and cell phones

http://www.dsgardencenter.com/index.asp


Information about landfills

http://science.howstuffworks.com/landfill.htm

Davis Street Transfer Center

This facility is quite remarkable if you think about it. It recycles the materials it gets by separating the trash that it takes in. The facility is there to help the reduction of the landfills. The center separates and composts 75% of the materials that they get.We learned that a lot of people throw away a lot of things that can be recycled and that as long as they don't see it they don't care. The problem is that it is easier not to recycle but to have someone else do it for us.
The transfer station takes the trash and finds things that can be recycled or made into compost and they recycle them such as plastic and electronics.the thing that most people don't know is that the trash is thrown into landfills and there they sit . The landfills are holes in the ground that you trash into and in the end product it is a mound in which they put fake grass and make it look like a mountain.The landfills have a protective plastic surrounding so that the liquid can't escape. The landfill in our Alameda County is Located in Livermore and it is called the Altamont.

Composting at THS Farm

In the afternoon after lunch a class went to our farm and made a compost pile to help let the plants grow. The students made it and also learned that it is made from leaves and twigs, grass clippings, succulent plant matter, old compost and water. A compost pile is a fertilizer that uses no pesticides to make an all organic farm. The regular fertilizer is sometimes dangerous to the foods we eat so we at the farm use a chemical-free fertilizer to make the food as healthy as possible. This ensures that the food is good to eat and is very healthy for us too.
How to make a compost pile:

Waste Audit

We went as a class and did a waste audit .These are the things that we found when we looked at our school's trash.We went and dumped trash on a tarp and put the trash into different pile so that we could tell what could have been recycled. We then weighed the items to tell the amount that had the most.
1. Classroom Trash

1. We got the trash from classrooms and the trash bins that are around our school so that we could do our experiment. Each bag that we had was given to separate groups to be sorted in to groups.

2.The next step was to weigh the trash to see what we were dealing with.
3. We dumped the trash into a mat so that we could the audit and so that we could understand what we were working with.

4. We sorted the trash in to different piles to be more efficient. We had 9 piles: Mixed papers, Newspapers, Plastic bottles#1 and#2, Other plastics, Aluminum and steel cans, Glass, Cardboard and paperboard, Other waste and the 9this food scraps & soiled paper.

5. We had to weigh the different piles so that we could we could find out how much each pile weighed and to get an exact amount of what we throw away.
Mixed papers:4lbs 60%
Newspapers:1.1lbs 10%
Plastic bottles:2.2lbs 30%
Other plastics:0 0%
Cans:0 lbs 0%
Glass:0 lbs 0%
Cardboard and paperboard:1lbs 10%
Other waste:2lbs 20%
Food scraps and soiled paper:2lbs 30%

In the survey we saw that a lot of the trash could have been put into the recycling to be used again. The classrooms could have the bins marked recycling and telling the students to work at being cleaner would do a lot. The students don't really Know about recycling and if they do then they don't care. The school officials need to get students better informed. The students could have composted the food scraps and the y could have reused some of the materials based on the Four R's.
Classes could get compost bins so that the food scraps can be recycled and the teachers can use the backs of paper for the printer.The amount of paper in school is a lot and in a way the school is contributing to the tearing down trees. The classes could start using computers so that the use of paper can decrease periodically. The school has a lot of things that can be recycled but without cooperation the students will continue to throw the items away.

Litter Survey

Students took pictures before lunch in separate areas of the school before and after lunch. The areas were in front of the school and in the quad. They also went to the grassy areas and the halls. The school was pretty much clean before school and then after there was a lot of trash everywhere. There was a lot of food waste and food wrappers. The before lunch pictures that I chose is the grassy areas so that the we could see the nature. The after pictures are the ones of grass at the end of lunch.There was a lot of litter where the students hang out and not really in the solitary areas.The pictures show how the school changes at lunch.
Before: After:

How I recycle

I use the four R's at a low level. I recycle bottles and reduce the need to buy things that I don't need. I work at a garden so I help things compose and that fits in with rot. I also reuse water bottles. I try not to throw everything away and sometime I don't but other times I do.

Information

My school is doing a 4R program and I'll explain what's up.This blog is called THS' Green Stars.This blog's main purpose is to give information on what is going on at THS.We currently have the recycling service but we need a lot more bins and stuff like that because the students still litter and throw away recyclable items.SLWRP is the program that we got when the Alameda County partnered with our school to help recycle.It is service learning waste reduction program that we call SLWRP.The 4R's are recycling, reuse, reduce and rot. The recycling is same as reuse meaning that that we use things more instead of throwing the items away. The rot means to compost and the reduce means to buy things you need or things that can be recycled.THS students need to recycle to make the world a better place.