Squash the rubbish

Is there really any such thing as ‘throwing rubbish away’? Unless it’s bio-degradable it all goes somewhere. Think about the volume of waste we produce and how we try to reduce it by squashing it instead of not producing it or re-using it.

Aim: to think about the difficulty of getting rid of rubbish, the impossibility of destroying it, and the possibilities for re-use and recycling.

Age group: 6-10.

Number of participants: up to 20.

Time required: 25 minutes.

Resources needed: a large box full of ‘rubbish’; toilet rolls, drinks cans, plastic milk cartons, other milk cartons, sweet/bar wrappers, cereal boxes, food trays etc, 4 plastic bags.

What to do:

Divide into teams of about four and divide the rubbish up into the number of teams. Each team must have an equal ‘portion’ of rubbish. Make sure the rubbish is much greater amount than will easily fit into a normal sized plastic bag.

Teams must try to get all of their rubbish inside the one plastic bag provided, within 5 minutes.

The winning team is the one that manages it or comes the closest.

Discussion:

  • Can rubbish really be ‘thrown away’?
  • Could you get all the rubbish into the bags if some of it was taken and recycled?
  • Where you come from, is anything ‘recycled’ or used again? What kind of items? Could anything here be used again?
  • What happens to all our rubbish in the end?
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