8+Science+1+Annie's+MSW+Project

Kate, Megan, Renni, and I did an experiment on Municipal Solid Waste, which is the waste from households and businesses. Our experiment counts the number of paper cafeteria cups used everyday, every month, and every year. We will calculate the volume of each cup and use that information to calculate the amount of space taken up in landfills by CCDS cups every year. The purpose of this experiment is to reduce the amount of space taken up by CCDS in landfills each year. We intend to change the cups in the cafeteria from non-biodegradable to biodegradable or compostable. If Country Day does make the switch to compostable cups, then the amount of space taken up in landfills will decrease because the new cups will be put in a composter and will compost within 180 days.
 * Introduction:**

-2 hand counters -10 cups -beaker and jar -calculator Safety Concerns and Guidelines
 * Materials:**
 * #1- It is important to be responsible during a lab
 * #2- You should follow directions and procedure in an experiment
 * #3- One should not work on a lab while completely alone
 * #4- Do not touch anything unless instructed to do so. If it belongs to someone else it could be dangerous
 * #5- No eating, drinking, or chewing gum because it could fall into your experiment and mess up your data. Ex. if we were finding the volume of each cup and a piece of pizza fell into the water that was supposed to be displaced by the cup, you data would be wrong.
 * #6- Follow instructions and only do experiments that are allowed and deemed safe by an instructor
 * #7- Be prepared and no horseplay or rough-housing during labs. Glass could be broken and that could be dangerous
 * #8- Keep your area clean and tidy while working
 * #9- Keep the isles clear so that no one trips and falls, disturbing labs and potentially harming themselves
 * #10- No the location of all safety equipment and exits in case of an emergency
 * #12- Be alert and proceed with caution
 * #14- Equipment instructions must be read before used
 * #18- Know what to do and where to be/go during a fire drill

Independent Variable- type of cups Dependent Variable- amount of waste from cups coming out of CCDS Control Group- non-biodegradable cups Experimental Group- biodegradable cups


 * Procedure:**
 * 1) Collect materials and passes
 * 2) Annie and Megan count cups during advisory snack on Wed.
 * 3) Renni and Kate count cups during 4th period on Wed.
 * 4) Annie and Kate count cups during 5th/6th lunch on Wed.
 * 5) Renni and Megan count cups during 7th/8th lunch on Wed.
 * 6) Renni and Megan count cups during 4th period lunch on Thurs.
 * 7) Renni and Megan count cups during 5th/6th lunch on Thurs.
 * 8) Kate and Annie count cups during 7th/8th lunch on Thurs.
 * 9) Annie and Megan count cups during advisory snack on Wed.
 * 10) Kate and Renni count cups during 4th period lunch on Wed.
 * 11) Kate and Annie 5th and 6th grade lunch on Wed.
 * 12) Megan and Renni 7th and 8th grade lunch on Wed.
 * 13) Find the average number of cups per day
 * 14) Find a biodegradable or compostable cup from the company that we currently use and make sure that the cups we use currently are not biodegradable or compostable
 * 15) Find the cost per cup of the cups we use and of biodegradable paper cups
 * 16) Find data of the number of cups used during CCDS lunches every month and year
 * 17) Find the volume per each cup and the total volume of all of the cups used during CCDS lunches
 * 18) Make a data table and graph
 * 19) Write Lab Report
 * 20) Make Voice Thread
 * Data:**

2/10/10 || Thursday 2/11/10 || Wednesday 2/24/10 ||
 * Number of Cups Used in the Charlotte Country Day School Middle School Cafeteria**
 * || Wednesday
 * # of cups Advisory Snack || 54 || 48 || 22 ||
 * # of cups 4th Period Lunch || 4 || 11 || 3 ||
 * # of cups 5/6th grade lunch || 142 || 189 || 135 ||
 * # of cups 7/8th grade lunch || 91 || 68 || 96 ||

Total number of cups per year: 45,638 Total volume of cups per year: 593,284mL
 * Projected Number of Cups used in Charlotte Country Day Middle School Cafeteria**
 * || Number of cups used every week || Number of cups used every year || Volume of cups per period per year ||
 * || N/A || 1,322 || 17,186mL ||
 * || 30 || 1,080 || 14,040mL ||
 * || 776 || 27,936 || 363,168mL ||
 * || 425 || 15,300 || 198,900mL ||

There are a few trends of data within the data that we collected. One trend is that during fourth period, the first available time to buy lunch, not many people use cups. Fourth period lunch is reserved entirely for teachers and staff, and many teachers and staff have their own water bottles and thermoses. During fifth and sixth grade lunch, there are a ton of cups used each day. We think that this is partially due to the fact that fifth and sixth graders have less clubs than seventh and eighth graders do. During seventh and eighth grade lunches there are still a large number of cups used, but not quite as many as are consumed during fifth and sixth grade lunch. There are only thirty-two advisory snacks that take place over the course of the year, so there are not a lot of cups consumed during that period. All in all, the Country Day Middle School uses a lot of cups!
 * Analysis:**

Our projected data suggests support of our hypothesis. Our hypothesis was that if Country Day made the switch to compostable cups then the amount of space taken up in landfills would decrease because compostable cups would compost within one-hundred and eighty days. Our conclusion is that if Country Day makes the switch to compostable cups, then the amount of space in landfills taken up by waste from CCDS (specifically cups) will decrease by about five-hundred ninety-three thousand, two-hundred and eighty-four mL each school year. Given that the amount of room the earth has to store waste is rapidly decreasing, there is no reason why the CCDS community should not switch to compostable cups, and lessen the problem slightly. If other schools decided to make the same switch, from regular cups to compostable ones, than the earth would have much more room for the kinds of waste that we are not able to currently limit. While I believe that we got solid data from this experiment, there were a few errors. One human error that was made was missing cups as people got them and another was accidentally counting the same cup twice. An experimental error that we had was not providing ourselves with enough days of data collection. Each day had drastically different circumstances, and ideally, we would have gotten about two ore more weeks worth of data. That would cover many different variables such as the food being served that day, the meetings (cycle day and day of the week) etc. The hard part about this experiment was finding time to count the cups. We had to work around our busy schedules and find periods that we were OK with missing. We missed lunch, advisory, S.H., D.E.A.R, and other classes. []
 * Conclusion:**