WASTE LESSON PLANS AND TORTOLA WASTE TOUR
Overview
These lessons, and the field trip, introduce students to waste management in
the BVI. Students will learn about how waste is currently managed, the types
of waste and the 4 R's on how to rethink, reduce, reduce and recycle. This
activity helps students understand the “materials flow” of many products we
use, from the natural resource through manufacturing and disposal.
Total Time: 6 hours
Objectives:
1. Understand why we have waste, to understand what happens to waste
when we throw it in the bin in the BVI, why is waste a problem?
2. Understand reduce, reuse, recycle and compost
3. Breaking the waste stream up into the various categories
LESSON 1: INTRODUCE WASTE AND WASTE MANAGEMENT
IN THE BVI
Go through powerpoint slides: slides 1 – 45 – approx. time: 15 – 20 mins
Materials:
Projector
Computer
Powerpoint presentation
LESSON 2: INTRODUCE THE 3 R’S
approx. 30 mins
Materials:
1 bag of clean trash (this can be loaned from Green VI) per group
containing: plastic bottles, bottle caps, glass jar and bottles, aluminum
cans, plastic soda rings, paper towel, paper, paperboard, leaves or
apples for organic waste, broken plastic toy, straws, polystyrene
container, compostable container, reusable container etc.
Fruit – bananas or apples, bucket to collect organic waste
Five sheets/ containers or areas labeled - reduce, reuse, recycle,
compost (rot) and waste.
Keywords:
Reduce Reuse Recycle Compost
1. Review the terms: rethink, reduce, reuse, recycle and compost. Whilst
reviewing terms, invite the children to eat a piece of fruit and ask them to
throw peels/ cores in the bucket
• Reduce- means to consume fewer resources. This can be done by buying
used items, borrowing items you don’t need to own, and buying good quality
products that will last and can be given away when you no longer want them.
• Reuse- means to use the product over again without any changes to it
other than cleaning. A reused item does not change form. Example: using a
clean yogurt container to hold leftovers.
• Recycle -recycling requires an item to go through a series of steps
(collection, processing, shipping, manufacturing, etc.) in order for the item to
be made into another product. Recycling requires more resources and energy
than reusing. Recycled items change form. Example: old bottles made into
art
• Compost- Items that are organic will decay or decompose over time.
Example: apple cores or carrot sticks leftover from lunches. Don’t include
meats or cheeses – they will rot and smell. Use organic waste from fruit
children have just eaten to demonstrate that this rots to become food for
plants
(Adapted from www.recyclesaskatchewan.ca Consumption and Waste lesson
plan)
Activities
1. Call on one to come up to the front, close their eyes (or blindfold), reach in
and pick out a treasure/trash. (Demonstrate with 1-2 students with 1-3
objects)
For each item chosen by a student from the trash can / bag, ask questions
like the following:
• What is it? (a can, a bottle, a piece of paper, etc.)
• What is it made of? (glass, metal, etc.)
• What resources are used to make this? (glass is made from sand, paper is
made from trees, plastic is made from oil, cans are made from aluminum
that is made from bauxite, etc.)
• Where does this resource come from? (sand comes from desert, rivers;
trees for paper come from forests in US, Canada, Indonesia, Amazon; oil
comes from under the surface of the earth etc.)
Can this item be re-used? Can it be recycled? Can it be composted?
NOTE for older children:
Extend questions a little further: Can you make the same thing out of the
recycled item – is it a closed loop? (a new bottle can be made from recycled
glass; a new soda-can can be made from recycled aluminum; a new plastic
bottle CANNOT be made from recycled plastic, but other plastic items like
carpet, fleece jackets, or plastic lumber can be made from recycled plastic
bottles; new paper can be made from recycled paper; new soil can be made
from composted banana, etc).
2. Each group spreads their bag of waste on the table and sorts it into the
five categories: reduce, reuse, recycle, compost or waste.
Students may need to discuss where certain items belong. Discussion may
include if the item could be made at home or made use of in a different way
before discarding, etc.
3. When sorting is complete, ask students to look at the sorted piles and
discuss the following:
Look at the waste pile - Can any of these be avoided? What are some
ways to reduce?
Look at the 'recycle' pile - Could recyclable items be reduced? (Bring juice
in reusable container instead of buying a small juice bottle or bring home
made cookies instead of packaged store bought ones?)
Can anything from the recycle or waste pile be reused again? (Provide
discussion examples like: Good one side paper could be used in the
classroom as scrap or calculation paper.) Trash to treasure activities, old
large detergent bottles can become water jugs -->watering cans
4. Have children sort the recycle pile into the different waste streams. For
older children allow them to create the categories themselves i.e. paper,
plastic, organic, metal, aluminium. Check the pile and discuss the difference
between aluminium and steel cans, can cardboard be recycled etc
If time: finish with Jack Johnson's You tube video REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE
http://youtu.be/CAfef-va2Do
LESSON 3: HOW LONG UNTIL ITS GONE? LITTER ACTIVITY
Focuses on the impact of trash on the environment and teaches kids the
difference between biodegradable and non biodegradable. See slide 46
Background:
Biodegradable vs. non-biodegradable
Refer to websites listed below for more information about biodegradable vs.
non-biodegradable resources.
In the simplest terms “biodegradable” means a material that is able to
degrade or break down. Examples of biodegradable materials are apple
cores, bones, paper, flowers, serving utensils, plates made of corn products.
“Non-biodegradable” refers to materials that are not broken down by
organisms. Examples of non-biodegradable materials are plastic, glass,
polyester clothing items, and aluminum cans.
Something is biodegradable when little tiny microorganisms in the earth can
break the object apart and turn it into soil. It looks like the thing disappears,
but it just becomes part of the soil.
Things that are biodegradable are often made of organic materials, or things
naturally occurring in our environment, not those synthetically produced in a
lab. For instance, a banana peel is biodegradable and will take approximately
3 days to degrade, but a plastic bottle will take hundreds of years!
Take a diaper for example… how many years do you think it takes for a
disposable diaper to biodegrade?
Answer: 500-600 YEARS!
Activity:
Go though the slide of marine debris on the powerpoint Slides 47/48. Divide
children into groups and hand out printable 1.
Once the majority are answered, Reveal all the answers and leave on the
slide.
Item Best Guess of Actual
Decomposition Decomposition
Time time in the
environment
Paper towels 2-4 weeks
Newspaper 6 weeks
Apple core / 2 months
cardboard box
Cotton gloves 1-5 months
Waxed milk 3 months
container
Photodegradable 6 6months
pack
Cotton rope 3-14 months
Wool glove 1 year
Biodegradable 1 year
diaper
Plywood 1-3 years
Painted wood stick 13 years
Tin can 50 years
Styrofoam cup 50 years
Styrofoam buoy 80 years
Aluminum cans 200 years
Plastic 6 pack ring 400 years
Plastic bottle 450 years
Monofilament fishing 600 years
line
Disposable diaper 450 years
Part 1:Ask students to re-sort through their garbage piles to organize them
based on biodegradable and non biodegradable.
Part 2: Of the non biodegradable what 3 pieces will take the longest to
degrade.
Discussion:
What problems might these cause wildlife and the environment?
From lesson 1 and 2 what do they think are the most important items to
reduce and reuse?
Can they pledge to pick up 1 piece of trash on the playground or beach a
day?
LESSON 4. TRASH TO TREASURE IN ACTION
See attached pdf for lesson ideas. Should you want the artists to come and
assist, their contact details are included.
LESSON 5. FIELD TRIP – WASTE TOUR OF TORTOLA (3 HRS)
Contact the Waste Management Department on 494-6245 to organize your
tour of the incinerator or landfill site.
LESSON 6. LEARN WITH MOVIES:
(these movies can be borrowed from Green VI)
Ages 6 – 12 Wall-E
Ages 13 and up: Waste Land
Ages 8 upwards: Bag it
College: The Next Industrial Revolution
Google lesson plans for these movies.
LESSON 7. CREATE A VISION - WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT THIS?
Have the children say what they would like to see. (clean beaches,
clean playground etc.)
How will they share what they learned?
When they are at the beach or playground where should they put
things, and if they see someone leave trash what should they say?
How will you involve others in the school to make the change
See http://www.greenvi.org/Projects/Education/Schools/Mentorship-
Programme.aspx to see what others in the BVI have done.
This lesson was created from the GuamPedia Where the Waste Goes lesson,
the Saskatchewan Waste Audit and the Trash Can Quiz from the Green
Schools Initiative.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Recycle Saskatchewan Website for recycling ideas and programs
www.recyclesaskatchewan.ca
Consumption and Waste lesson plan: http://environmentalsociety.ca/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/School-Waste-Garbage-Sort-Lesson-Plan.pdf
Lifestyle Campaign Action Plan Worksheet
http://environmentalsociety.ca/main/docs/LifestyleCampaignActionPlanWo
rksheet.pdf
• Green Schools Initiative, Hands-on Environmental Audits.
http://greenschools.net/article.php?id=99
Where the waste goes lesson plan. Guampedia.
http://www.guampedia.com/lesson-plan-where-the-waste-goes-1/
Student Printable 1
Item Guess how Actual time to What will be
long till it degrade going on
degrades before ‘its
gone’
Student Printable 2
REDUCE REUSE RECYCLE ROT
From your garbage bag:
What are two things that can be reused?_____________
_____________________________________________________
What are two things that can be recycled?
________________
__________________________________________________________
What two things does your group think you should try to
REDUCE your usage of ?
_________________________________
Name one thing you can DO tomorrow with what you
learned today______________________________________
__________________________________________________________
