Chiara's G4 Blog

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We are trying to set up a tour of the facility as well as a possible interview with the staff regarding energy used in recycling. Contact information for DWM (link thing not working here!!! Whyyyy?) :

http://www.denvergov.com/recmor/ContactsMoreInfo/tabid/425384/Default.aspx 

Survey:
Survey will be given to 100 people, both inside and outside of GW, and possibly outside.
Questions:

1. Do you recycle?
2. Do you own a recycling bin?
3. What do you recycle?
4. Do you ever reuse items, if so, what? And if not, why?
5. Circle recyclables (diagram will be given)
6. What in your opinion is the best benefit from recycling?
7. How much do you think is thrown away that can be recycled?
8. Is recycling better than reducing and reusing?

Last week (week of Oct. 5), we had planned to put Project Trashcan into effect. We had already cleared the project with Mr. Goldstein, as well as the head of the cleaning staff. Unfortunately, the message to not clear the trashcans in the North Lobby wasn't properly distributed. Not only were they empty, all the OTHER ones were empty as well, leaving it impossible for us to wiggle in our procedure. We plan to talk to the people again, so that we may continue with this part of the G4 Project.

Materials:

• Gloves
  
• Rolling Cart
• Plastic Wrap
• Masks (?)
• Trash & trashcans

Procedure:

Week One: No recycle bins next to trashcans

1. Take the 8 trashcans from the North Lobby, loading them onto the rolling cart, to the basement level outside the Wood Room.
2. Lay plastic wrap on floor, and dump contents of each trashcan one by one onto the wrap. Separate the contents into two piles: trash and recyclables. Separate the recyclables into their respective types (plastic, paper, etc.)
3. Record findings.
4. Repeat for each trashcan.
5. When finished collecting data, take percentage of recyclables found in trash.
6. Separate trash from recyclables, and dispose of as required.
7. Repeat process throughout the week.

Week Two: Have recycle bins next to trashcans

1. Follow same procedure as Week One, but this time take into account amount of recyclables in the recycle bins.
2. Take percentage.
3. Interpret data.

Miscellaneous Data

Taken from the Recycling Meeting on Oct. 7

• Recycling, though useful, does not fully dispose of the problem as the recycled materials are just used to make more environmentally unfriendly products.
• Reusing is the best way to handle the problem.
• 2,000 trees from the rainforests are cut down every minute. Growing back trees individually is more than 10-times slower than the destruction.
• The recycling process is EXTREMELY long and takes up energy:

1. Recycle, collect, deposit, sort (with highly advanced technology - does that mean less energy consumption?), degrade to simplest form, turn into a cube.  
2. Collect cube, melt, use energy to create new item.
3. Repeat process
   

So, after some group thought (and meetings), we've decided that our topic will be...

The energy used in recycling vs. getting new, and its effect upon the environment.

...Or something like that. We're not exactly sure if that's how it will be worded or fully worked. But that'll be the overall theme.... As for its contents, we plan on researching and observing the amount of energy used to create objects from recycled items, versus just making new ones, as well as its effect on environments (on energy use and non-recycling). We would also like to see if recycling has a huge impact on families - are they recycling everything they can (do they know ________ is recyclable?), do they reuse everything, or do they not bother? In the form of a survey and implied test (like a recycling bin next to the trash can), we'd like to measure the motivation of people to recycle and reuse. This motivation is an extremely important part to reducing the amout of junk in our dumps and on the planet, but is it enough to really nurse it back to health? And if not, then what do we do?

Note to self: Board is made of recycled trash? =9 Like, put together from papier-mache or cardboard, and decorated with wrappers and potentially recyclable materials. I have a recipe for all-natural rice glue (fancy way of saying crush Filipino rice into sticky mess) that we can use :)

We will survey a minumum of 25 people. Sample quesions are as follows.
"Do you recycle?"
"Do you own a recycling box?"
"What, typically, do you recycle?"
"Do you ever reuse items? If so, what?"

Trash Can Jackson
We will pick 5 random trashcans throughout the school. If there is a recycle bin next to them, for the first week we will take this away. For a week, we will go through the trash and see how many bottles are NOT being recyled, and are thrown away. The next week, we will place recycle bins next to the trash cans, and do the same process, only this time we will also see how many bottles were recyled.

~Carissa Marsh

Note: In order to make sure the results are accurate, we may have to use more than 5 trash cans, experiment more than once (i.e, throughout the week, several days).... Enough so that we have a fairly accurate average. Exact procedure to be discussed further with group~

After some trouble, finally joined Carissa's G4 group. Our possible topic as of now is the 'energy use of Cancer Cells vs. Normal Cells and their effect upon the bodily system.' We chose this topic because it's something we all found interesting, rather than a generic bland topic. May have some trouble linking to Environmental Systems, though. We'll see how it turns out.

Leader: Carissa Marsh
Chiara Gonzales
Camila Prado-Irwin
Jackson Downing