Waste Diary
Pre-Lab Questions
1) The US produces 600,000 tons of trash per day and 210 million tons of trash per year.
2) This 4 pounds per capita/per day and 1295 pounds per capita/per year.
3) The waste goes to landfills or to recycling and reusing centers in the US. The waste also goes overseas to other countries that are generally developing countries.
4) The waste can be recycled to make other products, reused, placed in a landfill, burned, or safely disposed of if it is chemicals.
5) By category, food is the largest amount of waste my family produces.
2) This 4 pounds per capita/per day and 1295 pounds per capita/per year.
3) The waste goes to landfills or to recycling and reusing centers in the US. The waste also goes overseas to other countries that are generally developing countries.
4) The waste can be recycled to make other products, reused, placed in a landfill, burned, or safely disposed of if it is chemicals.
5) By category, food is the largest amount of waste my family produces.
Problem
What types of trash do you generally throw away and how much of each type?
Hypothesis
Most of the trash that will be thrown away will be food and paper.
Materials
Trash
Solid waste inventory
Solid waste inventory
Procedure
1) Keep track of all the trash thrown away for three days.
2) Record the data on the solid waste inventory.
2) Record the data on the solid waste inventory.
Observations
Most of the trash that was thrown away was plastic or paper. Over the coarse of three days I threw away 50 items of trash, which where plastic, paper, and aluminum. Based on the three days, the number of items I would throw away in a year would be 6,083 items.
Data Table and Graphs
solid_waste_inventory.docx | |
File Size: | 30 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Analysis and Conclusions Specific to the Lab
1) Landfills are lined with a plastic liner to prevent trash from having contact with the environment and they also contain many pipes that carry rainwater, lechate, and methane to a water plant to be treated or other sites, where it can be properly cleared of pollutants or used for other things. These help prevent any pollutants from leak into the soils or surrounding environment.
2) Landfills are expensive because there many precautionary measures like the protective liner, drainage, lechate, and methane systems put in place to prevent leakage of any pollutants, which is very costly. Also, it takes a lot people to make sure that everything in the landfill and around it is working properly, so the upkeep of a landfill is also very costly.
3) I expected there to be more waste than what resulted, since my family and I do throw away a lot of trash. The results are understandable, since we not really home most of the time during the three days.
4) The average could be different because my family is not as large as other people's families and we tend to spend more time out of the house, so depending on where you are, you may throw out as much trash or any at all since you are not home.
5) I would accumulate about 135 pounds of trash.
6) The students would produce an estimated 2,430,000 pounds of trash.
2) Landfills are expensive because there many precautionary measures like the protective liner, drainage, lechate, and methane systems put in place to prevent leakage of any pollutants, which is very costly. Also, it takes a lot people to make sure that everything in the landfill and around it is working properly, so the upkeep of a landfill is also very costly.
3) I expected there to be more waste than what resulted, since my family and I do throw away a lot of trash. The results are understandable, since we not really home most of the time during the three days.
4) The average could be different because my family is not as large as other people's families and we tend to spend more time out of the house, so depending on where you are, you may throw out as much trash or any at all since you are not home.
5) I would accumulate about 135 pounds of trash.
6) The students would produce an estimated 2,430,000 pounds of trash.
General Analysis and Conclusions
The lab went ok but I do not think the results were very accurate since I only recorded the waste for a short period of time. I think it would have been better if I had did it for a longer period of time like 2 weeks or a month to get a better range of the types of trash I throw away. My hypothesis was not correct at all because I actually threw away more plastics than paper or food. The amount of trash I threw away was not a lot but this was probably due to the fact that I was not home for most of the time during the three days, which affected the results. Most of my trash I should have been able to recycle but I could not because there was no where to recycle it. While I was out, I notice every time I went to throw something away or recycle it, there was no recycle bins. Also, I notice a lot of the products that I bought or had were not made of recyclable materials. According the article "Too Much Trash", the US produces about on third of the world's garbage, which is a lot considering the fact that we only make up a small portion of the world, land wise. In the article, it says we do try to reduce the amount of trash we produce by recycling, but it does not work well because we do not continue the recycling loop. This means that in order for the US to reduces the amount of trash, we need to recycle products so they can be made into other products and then we need to buy those products made from the recyclables. By doing this we reduce the amount of trash in circulation, and also reduce the amount of resources because the products are made from already processed materials.
Amsel, Sheri. “Environmental Issues.” Too Much Trash. Exploring Nature Educational Resource. © 2005 - 2013. April 28, 2013. <http://exploringnature.org/db/detail.php?dbID=7&detID=2502>
Amsel, Sheri. “Environmental Issues.” Too Much Trash. Exploring Nature Educational Resource. © 2005 - 2013. April 28, 2013. <http://exploringnature.org/db/detail.php?dbID=7&detID=2502>