Page 5 of Environmental Management Lesson Plan by Indiana Department of Environmental Management

IDEM Lesson Plan: Recycling Page 5 of 24 D. What is in our trash? Activity 1 1 Garbage Pizza, a demonstration for the entire class. Purpose: To show students what's in a landfill using percentages, math, and fun props Materials: Garbage Pizza, Waste Category Percentage Sheet: "What's in Our Trash?", mini-trash can Instructions: K-3: Discuss with students all of the difference categories of trash that one might find in a landfill. Ask them to name the categories and list them on the board: paper, glass, metal, plastic, food waste, yard waste, household hazardous waste, and "other." Next, explain the pieces of the garbage pizza to them as the amount of paper, plastics, etc. that they would find if they were to dig through a landfill. Once you have gone through all of the pizza, ask the students which pieces they think could be recycled, putting away each piece as they call it out, leaving only the slice labeled "other" and explain that some of the "other" materials could be reused. 4-6: This activity can be extended for older audiences by using the mini-trash activity. The mini-trash can contains 8 items, each representing one of the major categories of trash you will be discussing. Divide the students into groups, giving each one of them a mini-trash can. Ask them to assign a percentage to each item based on how much trash they think it represents in the landfill. Give them five minutes to come up with their answers; reveal the correct percentages using the garbage pizza. Discussion/ Follow-up: Ask the students how the actual percentages compared to their expectations. Discuss with them how easy it would be to recycle a great percentage of the trash that is instead put into a landfill. E. Next Step: Recycle When recycling, one must be careful to do so properly. Many materials can be recycled, a few of these include: Paper Products (newspaper, corrugated cardboard, magazines, etc.) Metals (aluminum, tin, steel) Glass Products (bottles and jars) Plastics (drink bottles and milk jugs) Some recycling companies require that you separate every kind of material (ex: plastics must be separated from metals or glass, and each type of paper product must be separated such as newspapers, cardboard, magazine, or glossy papers), while some companies only require that you can separate your paper products from all other materials and the rest can all go into one container. Another item to check ahead of time is plastic. Every plastic material is assigned a number that can be found somewhere on the container (usually on the bottom) that lets you know what type of plastic it is. Only certain types of plastics can be recycled. (See "Plastic Packaging Resins" Handout) 1 Adapted from Lake County SWMD Environmental Recipe Book.

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