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

Ashley Westerberg
March 4th, 2010 Yellow _  Cleaning up the Country Day community one step at a time. I. Introduction: Even though the Country Day community does a lot of things to be sustainable, Mr. Keilty and Ms. Walthall decided to ask the eighth grade students to come up with different projects that could help Country Day reduce its municipal solid waste even more. My group members and I decided to look at waste on the school buses. Our hypothesis was that if recycling bins are put onto the buses, then the Country Day community will be a step closer to being sustainable and restorative. With recycling bins on the buses, students will be more likely to recycle bottles and cans from their snacks, and other recyclable items.  II.Materials: //Saftey Guideline Numbers: //
 * rubber gloves
 * one scale
 * goggles
 * microsoft exel
 * 15 trash bags from buses
 * one laptop

Safty Concerns
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 * Sharp objects on cans top
 * broken glass
 * jagged edges on cans
 * germs
 * fluides

III. Procedure: <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 81%;"><span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">1. Contact Sheila Forbis and Ron Varner 2. Ask where the trash is dumped and how often the bus drivers dump their trash 3. Go to bus yard and gravel lot across from the tennis courts and see where bus drivers dump their trash 4. Collect trash from shuttle, Christ Church bus, and Mr. Keitly’s bus in the morning and afternoon for three days 5. Bring trash bags from buses to science class 6. Sort the trash we collected into a pile of recyclables and trash, using goggles and gloves 7. Weigh recyclables 8. Weigh trash 9. Make graph from all data collected from each bus, one graph per bus per morning/afternoon 10. Compare the recyclables and trash 11. See if it is best to have recycling on buses or have bus drivers divide the trash and recyclables when throwing away there trash 12. Make sure there is a recycling dump at the upper school bus lot

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 118.8%;"><span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Independent Variable: <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">the bins <span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">Dependent Variable: <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 14pt;">recyclables in trash <span style="color: #0000ff; display: block; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%; text-align: left;">IV. Data:
 * = <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Dates of Collection ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">PM Shuttle recyclable mass(grams) ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">AM Christ Church bus recyclable mass (grams) ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Sports bus recyclable mass (grams) ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Total Bus Recylables mass (grams) ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Trash mass (grams) ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Total MSW mass (grams) ||
 * = <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2/17/2010 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">0 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1.4 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">8.1 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">9.5 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">97 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">106.5 ||
 * = <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2/18/2010 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">57.2 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">0 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">0.2 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">57.4 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">42.9 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">127.1 ||
 * = <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2/19/2010 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">0.9 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1.6 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">0.2 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2.7 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">0.7 ||= <span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3.4 ||

<span style="color: #0000ff; display: block; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 72.9%; text-align: left;">V. Analysis: What trends does your graph show? Our graphs show that one-third of the trash collected everyday is recyclables which proves that recycling is needed on every CCDS bus. During our experiment we relized that there is not MSW in the trash can everytime we need to collected data, but there was enough recylables in the trash everytime we were able to collect MSW to have recycling on the bus.

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<span style="color: #ff0000; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> **VI. Conclusion:** Our hypothesis was not supported in this project. We expected that if we were to put recylcing bins on buses then the Country Day community would be a step closer to being sustainable and restorative because it would students could recycle some of the waste. But after collecting the trashbags, we found out that the majority of the waste is not recyclable anyways. Two-thirds of the MSW was not recyclable and only one third was recyclable. A challenge in our experiment was collecting the data. A group member did not collect data from her bus, so we had to make adjustments to our data table and procedure. After collecting data from the buses I believe that recycling is need on buses. I belive this because if we collected all recyclables everyday for an entire school year, we could still reduce the MSW by one-third. That could help the earth to be greener. Two bins on the buses might be a problem because of space, but with a few minor adjustments it would be easy.


 * Link to Brook, Ashley, and Morgan's Voicethread:** []