April 26, 2023

Notes by Om Shreejay

Review

Last week we learned about nurturing our relationship with Mother Earth. This helped us care for Mother Earth as much as we take from mother earth. Through this relationship we are developing love to naturally care for her in our use of resources. That is why we have been planting trees, last week and the weeks before the RAW. 

Workshop with Lavanya Didi on Managing Waste

Lavanya Didi joined us today to share how to manage waste/garbage. We watched a video about recycling for kids. 

Recycling is to take used materials like cans, plastic, paper etc. and to turn them into new products that we can use again. 

Recycling is important as it protects our natural resources such as trees. The benefits of recycling are 1) to reduce waste, 2) to use less energy, and 3) to reduce pollution. 

There are 3 steps in recycling – 1) To identify and collect the items that can be recycled in a separate can for recyclables (vs. trash can); 2) To sort the recyclable items into different categories e.g., paper, glass, aluminum etc., and 3) To process the recyclable items in special ways e.g., metals vs. paper.

The 3 R’s:

1) Reduce – Reduce the amount of resources that you use and create less waste e.g., water, paper etc. – if you wanted to draw something you could draw on the back of an old paper,

2) Reuse – find new ways of using resources – to take something old or unwanted and use it in a different way e.g., reuse cereal box, shoe box, milk carton etc. for creative uses like decoration, and

3) Recycle – Instead of throwing something in the trash that can be reused or made into something new, recycle it and make it easy to reuse again. Ways we can recycle at home – separate paper from plastic, compost bins.

We discussed ideas on things to apply the 3 R’s e.g., reusable bags, old socks, old clothes, cereal boxes, tin cans, car tires, newspapers/mailers etc. This is something we can do every day and start today!

Lavanya Didi also showed us a PowerPoint on managing waste. Waste is defined as anything we want to get rid of. The earth has a pollution problem – Americans throw away 700,000 pounds of trash per day which makes the earth more polluted. 

The 4^th R is Refuse. It meant to refuse buying things that we don’t need and contributes to waste e.g., refuse to buy plastic bottles and instead have a reusable water bottle, refuse to use plastic bags at the grocery store and instead bring your own cloth bag.

Reflection Adventure for the Week (RAW)

Take one of the R’s and practice/ share what you did next week.    

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Notes by Pranavi Anantnarayan

Managing Waste:

Video: We watched a video about recycling, I talked about taking used material and using it to create something new! It also talked about reducing, reuse, and recycling. Some materials are glass, plastic bags, and cardboard. This will also save protects natural resources, and takes less energy, and pollution. Some ideas are bringing cloth bags for groceries or making a puppet from old socks you have. The steps are to collect, organize, and produce.

Presentation: 

Refuse: Saying NO to stuff we don’t need

Reduce: creating less waste

Reuse: taking old or unwanted items you might otherwise throw away 

Recycle: when we dispose of what we have, make sure we do it in a way that makes it easier to be again

RAW: make a resolution