Week 7 - Presentation Preparation and Recology CleanScapes Presentation

This week the students continued to work on their presentations. They are also busy collecting trash for their presentations to offer visuals to the classes about which types of garbage go in which bin. Some students will be showing these items while some are using them in a game format. I love seeing the creativity and collaboration among the groups!

On Thursday, we had a representative from Recology CleanScapes visit the group and share important information about recycling and composting. (Recology CleanScapes is the business that collects St. Joseph's waste). Elizabeth, the outreach and education representative shared the 4Rs (instead of the 3RCs). Can you guess what the 4th R stands for? Be sure to ask your child!

She shared pictures and videos about the process of sorting the recycling. We learned a lot of helpful information that can be used in the students' presentations. 

Elizabeth explained that the process of composting is like baking a cake. Great analogy! Be sure to ask your child to explain that analogy to you. 

Here are some interesting facts we learned:
-Each person creates about 5 pounds of waste per day.
-The landfill in King County near Mount Rainier will be full in 10 years and there are no current plans to build another one. (It takes $10 million dollars to build a landfill!)
-Biggest problems at the recycling plant are:

• Plastic film including plastic bags. These get stuck around the machines and an employee has to crawl down and manually cut them out. You can tie up multiple plastic bags together and recycle them as a big clump - just don't do it separately!
• Importance of items being clean. Elizabeth told us you can "spoon clean" though. This means wiping containers down well with a utensil.
• Shredded paper. It flies everywhere in the facility and ends up in the landfill. Be sure to compost shredded paper!

-You can compost colored, soiled napkins.
-Seattle does not recycle by number. Any styrofoam container that has a number on the bottom and a recycling symbol is not actually recyclable.
-Clean, shiny paper plates can go in the recycle. If they are quite dirty, they need to go in the garbage. (Any shiny layer on a paper item can't be composted. Starbucks coffee cups are a great example. They need to be recycled).

We are grateful for Elizabeth's expertise. She plans to return to the school in the fall and share helpful reminders to start the school year off on the right foot with correct garbage sorting.