Session 7 - Wasting Less

Are You Wasting Less?
After your class has had some time to practice the Four R’s, we hope you’ll do a second round of measuring your trash. Do you see any improvement?


Following the standard procedures used in Session 2 is essential for getting an accurate measure of progress. Otherwise, you can’t know why results differ.

Reviewing progress is an important part of any undertaking—environmental or otherwise. Lack of success may indicate a need to rethink one’s strategy.



Try This!  

Get new (improved?) trash totals.
Discuss what you’ve learned.



New Trash Totals

Remember the adventure of managing your class while students collected, sorted, and measured trash? Remember thinking, “I’m never doing this again!” Well.... The most effective way to see if the Four R’s—reduce, reuse, recycle, respond—are making a difference for your students is get a new set of trash totals.

If you need to refresh your memory, please look at Session 2 and Session 3. (Note: You don't need to enter data a second time.)



Discuss Your New Findings

In Session 4 your class wrote and posted a Conclusions Statement. We invite you to do so again, but this time please post it in the Conclusions 2 forum.)

Topics to address might include the following:

  • Did the overall amount of trash increase or decrease?
  • How significant was the overall change?
  • Were there noticeable changes in the average amount of trash for any categories?
  • Was the same category still the largest? The smallest?
  • Were students pleased by the results? Surprised?
  • To what do your pupils attribute the (lack of) changes they saw?
  • Have the Four R’s been effective for your class?
  • What are the next steps in your students’ efforts to combat trash?
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