PITCH-IN CANADA
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Re-Think Activities
An educational Unit for children up to Grade 4
Written by Valerie Thom, B.Ed. and edited by Allard W. van Veen, APR, Fellow, CPRS

This unit has six chapters, each filled with information, ideas and projects. Words in bold and in italics are featured in the glossary which you can reach by clicking here

Skills: drawing

Time: one class period

Learning Objective: students will describe the solid waste disposal method used in their community; students will consider issues and problems, relating to that disposal method, with the emphasis on the local situation.

Materials and Equipment: contact local authorities for accurate information on the solid waste disposal method(s) (other than recycling) used in your municipality, including resource recovery plants, dumps/landfills, incinerators, etc.

Activity:

1. Discuss with the students where their garbage is disposed of, some may have visited the site.
2. Provide students with the information you have obtained.
3. Have students use the information to make a mural showing the municipal dump/landfill, incinerator, resource recovery plant, etc. (depending on the system used in your municipality). For instance, a landfill mural may include the trucks arriving, trucks dumping the garbage, the bulldozers working to spread and compact, special environmental controls such as fencing, pipes to take away the methane gas, etc. 

RE…Think

The following are general guidelines for discussion. Depending on your local situation, you may have other garbage disposal issues and problems you will want to discuss with your students.

Discuss with the students:

• Can you think of environmental problems the dump/landfill may cause in our community?
• What environmental controls are used to prevent pollution problems from the landfill?
• Would you like to live next to a dump/landfill?
• What will happen to our garbage when this site (dump/landfill) is full?
• Would you like (name a local park or wilderness area) used as the site for the next dump?
• Why or why not?
• When our dump is full, should we send our garbage to (name a nearby local town or community)?
• Do you think the residents of (as above) would like to have our garbage dumped close to them?
• What are some of the things we can do so that as little as possible of our garbage has to end up at the landfill/dump? (Reduce our garbage, reuse and recycle wherever possible rather than throw away.)

• Can you think of environmental problems the incinerator might cause in our community? (e.g. air pollution)
• How is the incinerator designed to prevent environmental problems? (Emission control devised, etc.)
• What happens to the ash residue from the incinerator?
• What are some of the other things we can do with our garbage other than sending it to the incinerator?

• What happens to the remainder of the garbage that can’t be recovered/used by the resource plant? (See above for further questions, depending on whether an incinerator or landfill is then used.)

Further activities would depend on your location situation. You may wish to invite a representative of your municipality’s solid waste management department to discuss the local situation with your students. Have students prepare questions for him/her in advance.

Click here to return to the Index for Chapter 4 and more activities

Click here to return to the Index for Re-Think