Lessons in Nature’s Recycling

On November 15th, our educators collaborated with local classroom teachers to hold the 1st ever “Great 5th Grade Trash Audit” at Harriet Beecher Stowe (HBS) Elementary School in Brunswick! As part of their updated science units, 5th graders are focusing on matter cycling– the idea that all matter on Earth essentially gets “recycled” into new materials. Nature is a terrific recycler– fallen logs, leaves, and sticks on the forest floor become soil. Dirty water gets filtered into clean water. How can humans do a better job mimicking nature, and making sure our “trash” can turn into something new?

Students focused on the way humans can use compost piles to turn food scraps into nutrient-rich soil, and the many ways material get turned into new products when we throw them in the recycle bin — for example a plastic juice container becoming a fleece jacket, a plastic bench, or a new plastic bottle.

During this trash audit, 5th graders (wearing gloves) sorted trash from the school breakfast that day, in a fast-paced and energetic relay race, sorting the trash into buckets labeled “could have been composted”, “could have been recycled”, “had to go to landfill.” They discovered that out of the many bags of trash, most of it actually could have been recycled or composted. The only material that truly needed to go in the trash was plastic wrapping from snack packages– and this comprised only a softball-sized amount of trash.

HBS school has just begun composting in their cafeteria during lunch, and students had terrific questions, observations, and ideas about how their school could work even harder to reduce the amount of trash being thrown in the dumpster.