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


 * Renni Turpin 3/4/10 8-1

Plastic Cups vs. Biodegradable Cups

Introduction**

While the entire process of Linear Waste Managment system creates a lot of municipal solid waste however consumption and disposal create the most waste.The Country Day Middle School hundreds of cups per day and thousands of cups per year. Our cups are not biodegradeable so the thousands of cups sit and take up space in a land fill. So Annie, Kate. Megan, and I are collecting the data and seeing just how much space Charlotte Country Day is taking up at Landfills. So our group plans to get the data then provide a solution that is cost effective and biodegradable. If Country Day changed to biodegradable cups then the amount of waste in landfills will be lessened because Country Day will not be contributing as much.

Materials - Two Hand Counters No Safety Concerns.

Procedure: 1. Collect materials and passes 2. Kate and Renni count cups during advisory snack on Wednesday. 3. Annie and Megan count cups during 4th period on Wednesday. 4. Annie and Kate count cups during 5th/6th lunch on Wednesday. 5. Renni and Megan count cups during 7th/8th lunch on Wednesday. 6. Renni and Megan count cups during 4th period lunch on Thursday. 7. Renni and Megan Count cups during 5th/6th lunch on Thursday. 8. Annie and Kate count cups during 7th/8th lunch on Thursday. 9. Find the average number of cups per day 10. Find the cost per cup of the cups we use and biodegradable paper cups 11. Find data of the number of cups used during CCDS lunches every month and year 12. Find the volume per each cup and the total volume of all of the cups used during CCDS lunches 13. Make a data table and graph,Start Writing Lab Report Independent Variable-Kind of cups Dependent Variable- Amnt of waste from cups coming out of ccds CG- Waste from original plastic cups EG- Waste from biodegrade Cups


 * ~  ||~   ||~ Number of cups Used In Cafeteria ||~   ||

2/10/10 || Thursday 2/11/10 || Wednesday 2/24/10 || Total number of cups- 45,638 Total volume- 593,294ml
 * || Wednesday
 * Advisory || 54 cups || 48 cups || 22 cups ||
 * 4th || 4 cups || 11 cups || 3 cups ||
 * 5/6 || 142 cups || 189 cups || 135 cups ||
 * 7/8 || 91 cups || 68 cups || 96 cups ||

Projected Number of cups Total number of cups- 45,638 Total volume- 593,294ml
 * Analysis**
 * || per week || Per Year || Volume of cups per period per year ||
 * Advisory || n/a || 1,322cups || 17,186ml ||
 * 4th || 30cups || 1,080cups || 14,040ml ||
 * 5th/6th || 776cups || 27,936cups || 363,168ml ||
 * 7th/8th || 425cups || 15,300 cups || 198,900ml ||

A major trend of data is that the fifth and sixth's grade use the most cups and another is that fourth period no one really buys anything, But a real trend is that Charlotte Country Day uses a lot of cups.


 * Conclusion**

In our hypothesis, my group stated that the amount of waste form cups that country day contributes to landfills would be lessened if we used bio degradeable cups, our data supports our hypothesis because our projected total volume of 593,294ml would not go into a landfill if our school used biodegradeable cups. We had only one issue with our project, an expiremental error; we only collected data for three days, If we had collected longer we would have more accurate averages. The collecting of our data was not hard but it was boring and we were forced to miss class. The solution to the issue of our school filling up so much waste in a landfill is to use bio degradeable cups.

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