Every week on Friday, 9DNN heads to the stash of rubbish collected by the different homerooms on duty each week to sort through the bins. We are mainly focusing on the Year 7, 8, 9, and 13 bins. This is to identify patterns of waste at Sancta Maria College.
Before the activity started, we brainstormed as a class what we wanted to investigate. Eventually, we decided on two investigations: How much plastic is wasted per week, and what type and how much snacks are consumed per year level.
Data is collected weekly so we can complete our pattern seeking investigations as part of being apprentice scientists. We tip the rubbish out of the red bin collection, and start sorting, observing and recording data. We discuss our findings such as why the Y13s bin contains a lot of energy bars compared to a Y7 bin that contains more lollies instead. The results are surprising each week, and the experience helps us to critically think about factors affecting the patterns that we see.
We will present our results at a Year assembly to raise awareness of the waste made at school in the aim of changing the patterns that we see to help with making Aotearoa a waste-free land, and to strengthen our school virtue of kaitiakitanga.
