Recycling for science.

Hurumanu - Recycling

Aim: To learn practical ways of recycling so that we can make our world a better place.

The Zero Waste Climate Solution movie

How can we prevent climate change by recycling these products?

Plastics: It's not releasing carbon dioxide gas because you aren't burning anything.
Cycling or walking: Means that you are not driving and letting outgas
Paper: Means that you don't have do cut down more trees 
Steel: Mean you don't need to use coal to melt down the steel.

Video questions:

What is Zero Waste? one of the quickest and cheapest ways a community can immediately reduce climate impact.

What can we do on the planet?

1. recycle
2.  reduce
3.  reuse
4. redesign
5. repair 

What do we need to recycle? plastic steel, paper, and other materials.

What does recycling do? Makes it so you don't have to cut down trees and burn the things that you're not using. 

How much of our rubbish is food scraps? 55%

What does soil due to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? causes climate change and causes global warming.

What do we need to do? change our ways.

What is a carbon footprint?

How can you make your Carbon Footprint smaller?

ENERGY SAVING TIPS FILM

Name 4 of the tips.

1. turn off the socket on your wall
2. turn off your microwave
3.  turn off your TV 
4. turn off your light when not using it.

AT WHAT RATES DO DIFFERENT ITEMS DECOMPOSE?

MY INVESTIGATION.

Choose 5 items from the list and investigate them. 

You need to answer three questions.

Name: 

1. How long do they take to decompose?
2. What resource/fossil fuel are they made from?
3. How is this resource recycled?
4. How does this object contribute to climate change

How long do they take to decompose...  There are five things on this board that I have chosen to research.  Below there are the five things that I chose.

1. Glass… It is actually one of the longest man-made materials.  It takes about one million years to decompose. The fossil fuel is hydrocarbons and methane. fossil fuel Any fuel such as coal, petroleum crude oil or natural gas that has developed within the Earth over millions of years from the decayed remains of bacteria, plants or animals.Glass is 100% recyclable and can be recycled endlessly without loss in quality or purity. Glass is made from readily-available domestic materials, such as sand, soda ash, limestone and “cullet,” the industry term for furnace-ready recycled glass. The only material used in greater volumes than cullet is sand.
2. Plastic… Normally plastic take at least takes 1000 years to decompose. Plastics are derived from natural, organic materials such as cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt and, of course, crude oil. Crude oil is a complex mixture of thousands of compounds and needs to be processed before it can be used. The production of plastics begins with the distillation of crude oil in an oil refinery. Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastic and reprocessing the material into useful products. ... Each time plastic is recycled, additional virgin materials must be added to help improve the integrity of the material. So, even recycled plastic has new plastic material added in.
3. Aluminium… Aluminium can take to 200-500 years to decompose/brake down. Bauxite is mined from the earth's crust and processed into alumina/aluminium. Because the ore is mined, it is often said that natural resources are being depleted.
Bauxite is mined from the earth's crust and processed into alumina/aluminium. Because the ore is mined, it is often said that natural resources are being depleted. ... Once these product applications reach the end of their useful life, the aluminium can be recycled and used again to make another product application.                                                                     
4. Styrofoam cup… It can at least take 500 years or forever to decompose/breakdown…
Plastics, also called polymers, are produced by the conversion of natural products or by the synthesis from primary chemicals generally coming from oil, natural gas, or coal. 

The process of recycling Styrofoam involves feeding the collected expanded-polystyrene EPS foam through conveyor belts into a machine that first shreds the material. ... This process reduces the volume of the foam by up to 1/50 of its original volume and turns the Styrofoam into neat and dense blocks.