8+Science+2+Morgan's+MSW+Project

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**Cleaning up the Country Day Community One Step at a Time ** =====

Morgan Cunningham--March 2, 2010--Yellow Class
====**I. Introduction- ** The way that this project was started was when Mr. Keilty put two cups in watery soil to see if they would biodegrade. Mr. Keilty and Ms. Walthall wanted the whole eighth grade to come up with a project to help the Country Day community reduce its municipal solid waste. The purpose of this experiment is to manage our municipal solid waste in a more sustainable way. If the municipal solid waste on buses was measured then there would be more recyclables then trash on our school buses. ====

**II. Materials- ** 1. One laptop 2. Rubber gloves 3. One scale 4. Goggles 5. Microsoft excel 6. Trash bags to collect trash (5 bags per day for 3 days)

1 . Germs in fluids 2. Sharp objects on can tops 3. Jagged edges on cans 4. Broken glass  **Safety Guideline Numbers**
 * 1
 * 2
 * 4
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">6
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">7
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">9
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">11
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">13
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">15
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">16
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">18
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">21
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">23
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">25
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">26
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">27
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">29
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">39
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">43

III. Procedure- ** ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Contact Mrs. Forbis and Mr. Varner by email to ask questions about where trash is thrown away, when trash is thrown away, and how many buses there are in the bus yard ====
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Go to the lower school bus yard and the gravel lot to see where trash is thrown away
====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3. Using trash bags collect the trash off of the sports bus, the shutle, and the Christ Church bus in the mornings and the afternoons. 4. Bring the trash back to Mr. Keilty's classroom ====

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">9. Compare the weight of both piles
====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">10. Determine if its best to buy recycling bins for all of the buses or to have the bus rivers sort the recyclables and dispose of it in a recycling bin on campus ==== <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Experimental Group-placement, availability of recycling bins Control Group-trash Dependent Variable-trash Independent Variable-recyclables
 * Groups-**


 * ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Dates of Collection === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Recyclables ** === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">PM Shuttle in mass (grams) ** === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">AM Christ Church bus in mass (grams) ** === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Sports bus in mass (grams)** === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> Total Bus Recyclables mass (grams) ** === || <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Trash in mass (grams)** ||  || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Total MSW mass (grams)** === ||
 * ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2/17/2010 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">0 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">1.4 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">1.4 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">8.1 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">9.5 === || <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**97** ||  || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">106.5 === ||
 * ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2/18/2010 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">57.2 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">0 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">0 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">0.2 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">5 === || <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**42.9** ||  || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">127.1 === ||
 * ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2/19/2010 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">.9 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">1.6 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">1.6 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">0.2 === || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">2.7 === || <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**0.7** ||  || ===<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">3.4 === ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Averages** ||  ||   ||   ||   ||   ||
 * || <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**23.3** ||  ||   ||
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**46.86666667** ||  ||   ||   ||   ||   ||   ||   ||   ||||   ||

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">**<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">V. Analysis **<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">- <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">What trends does your graph show? ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">My graphs show that on most days about one-third of the trash was recyclable. This tells us that we would benefit from having recycling bins on buses. Some days there was little municipal solid waste, but the majority of this waste could be recycled. ====

====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**VI. Conclusion-** My hypothesis was that if the municipal solid waste on buses was measured then there would be more recyclables then trash on our school buses. My hypothesis was not supported because on most days there was about two-thirds of trash and only one-third of recyclables. There was really only one day where the amount of recyclables was higher then the amount of trash. A problem with our experiment was that the amount of trash on the buses varied between days. One day there would be a significant amount of trash and the next day there would not be any trash at all. This problem is experimental. Another problem that we encountered was that if we were to place a separate bin, only for recyclables, there is limited space to do so. If we could manage to fit these bins then there is also the issue of cost. If we are going to put a recycling bin on every Country Day bus then there is going to be a cost for these bins. This is something that along with Administration we will have to figure out. This problem is also experimental. A challenge that our group had was consecutively collecting data. On some days a group members would either forget to grab the bag of trash or would not be on that bus on that specific day. Also, for the shuttle there is more then one bus, so this made it difficult to collect trash from the same shuttle bus each day. The result of this challenge was that we had to make changes to our data table which changed our graphs. Our data shows us that recycling is needed on buses because of the significant amount of trash that is being thrown away each and every day ====