What is in our recycle bin?

 In Room 2 we learned that the teachers and children in Scoil Mhuire are putting too much into the recycle bin every week. It is our job to solve this problem! First we decided to look into our recycle bin and see exactly what is in there.

We put newspaper onto the tables to keep them clean. We sorted the rubbish into different piles. We had a pile for paper, for plastic, for tin foil, for lunch wrappers and for juice cartons.

We used a basin to measure the piles of rubbish.

Paper

We counted 2 and a half basins of paper!

That is a huge amount. We decided that we would use both sides of the paper when writing and drawing. This way we don’t waste the paper. Also we decided that it was silly to draw only one thing on a page and then get a new one for a different drawing. It is much better to fill the page up! Our teacher also decided that when she gets notes she will put them in the writing box so that we can draw and write on the blank side. This will make a big difference to the amount of paper that goes in our bin.

Plastic

We had one basin of plastic.

The plastic included pages our teacher had laminated and cut out and resealable bags for lunches. We decided that there is no need to put the plastic resealable bags in the bin. Why not bring them home, empty the crumbs out and use them again?

Believe it or not we had no plastic bottles in the bin. We know we can bring those home and use them again. Well done Room 2!

Tin Foil

We had half a basin of tin foil.

That is quite a lot. The tin foil was all really clean. A lot of the time the tin foil can be used again. We will bring our tinfoil home with us anymore. We have to remember not to scrunch it up so that we can use it again to wrap our sandwiches. Sometimes we don’t even need tin foil. A lunch box can keep our food fresh without needing to wrap it up.

Lunch wrappers

We had half a basin of lunch wrappers.

Lunch wrappers included the little boxes of raisins, cereal bar wrappers, rice cake wrappers, cracker bags/wrappers and clean tops from yogurt cartons. We think that this is OK  after a week of lunches so we are quite happy with this result. We will try to keep this up as the year continues.

Juice cartons

We were able to count the juice cartons and we only had 4 of them.

We think this is very good after a week of lunches. Most of us bring beakers to school with water, milk or sometimes juice. Some of us bring in plastic bottles to drink from and we are great for bringing those home and using them again.

What should we do to stop filling our recycle bin too much?

We decided that we need to focus on the paper, plastic bags and tin foil.

We are going to do our best to use the front and the back of the paper in our class when we are drawing and writing.

We are going to bring our plastic resealable bags home to be used again.

We are going to bring our tin foil home to be used again.

Room 2 can do it!