Banting Green: Science and the Environment Plus: March 2018

I found this Petition important not only for the changes we hope to make to reduce plastic waste in the world but also because Janet showed me, Hayden, and Darren that WE could make a change.

We would spend stretches of time arguing with her and being close minded about taking a stand so others could hear our voice. We thought that people and corporations would not listen. After creating the petition about making a change to compostable coffee cup lids to reduce plastic waste we are seeing that others care about the same issue and the health of our planet.

At first we thought of our course summatives "Advocacy Action For The Health of Our Planet and Ourselves" as just a task. By following through with our actions we proved to ourselves that change can be made. Three weeks after creating our petition to reduce plastic coffee lid waste directed at Tim Horton's, Starbucks and McDonald's we now are about to reach almost 4000 signatures. We also wanted for these corporations to promote the Lug-A-Mug concept and for all the people that buy their coffee and tea to also bring their own mug or cup.

We didn’t believe we would get many signatures because we thought no one would really care to take action with us. We "gloomed and doomed" thinking that it was too late to make change for the health of our planet.

Enough people are commenting and supporting our Petition and the signatures just keep adding up day-by-day. With all the support from individuals we want Tim Horton's, Starbucks and McDonald's to take action and reduce the plastic waste created.

Janet proved to us that anyone can make a change all we have to do is try.

Please sign our Petition below. https://www.change.org/p/guest-services-timhortons-com-have-decomposable-coffee-lids

Owen Ngo

Banting Recycling and Garbage Audit Rational, Procedure, Data and Analysis November 2017

By Owen NGO

We as a society produce way to much garbage and waste too much food. The worst part is, even though we produce this much garbage we can’t even put it in the right place.

In Canada we produced 777 kg per capita of municipal waste in 2008, that’s twice as much as the best performer, Japan. Over 75% of waste is recyclable, but only about 30% of it actually gets recycled. That’s ridiculous considering that 93% of Canadian households have access to some form of recycling program. One fact that’s hard to hear is that Canada ranks last place out of 17 countries and gets a “D” grade on the municipal waste generation report card.

What I’m trying to get at is that we need to take into account where we put our waste and how much waste we produce as well. A way we can help people put waste in the right place and track how much waste we produce within our school is to do a waste audit.

What we can do is have a few students from the science room help because it can fit into their course expectations. Basically what we want to do is have a few students go around the school to weigh the garbage of every class/room in the school and to see if they see if they have placed the waste in the wrong bin. This baseline waste audit will be a snapshot of how the school is doing. Once we have weighed each bin - Blue, Black, Compost and Garbage we will do a final sort out. Every Friday we have a school wide recycle collection from the week. Students in each class sort our their blue, black and compost and bring it to science for the final check and rating before being placed in the Green, Blue and Black Bins outdoors. put them in their rightful place. The goal of the audit is to raise awareness and control the weight of how much garbage the school of Frederick Banting produces each year and to further help us put all the waste produced in their rightful place as well. A waste audit helps determine how much waste is produced by each student in the school every year. Our school got ranked Gold for Eco-schools for the last three years so let’s keep it that way.

How to: You’re going to need a few students to help with this along with a scale and empty bins (garbage,blue,black,and compost).

Record the weight of a students who will be stepping on the scale with the bins
Record the weight of the student holding each type of empty bin (garbage,blue,black,and compost) and subtract the original weight from the weight of the bins, Now you have the weight of each empty bin.
Go around class to class weighing all the bins and subtract to the weight of the empty bin and the students weight from the new given weight. Now you have the weight of the waste: including compost, blue, black and garbage.
Record all your findings in a table.
Add up the weight of each type after you’re done (garbage, compost, plastic recycle, paper recycle) for each class and area in the school. Our black, blue and compost is collected every Friday so by doing our waste audit on Friday we are recording 5 schools days of recyclables. The garbage is collected daily by the custodian so on our Friday Audit Day the weight of the garbage weighed was for Friday gives a snapshot of the total weight of 1 day’s garbage.
Multiply by the amount of school days in a year (194 days).
Divide the weight by the amount of students in the school. That will give you the average amount of garbage each student in your school will produce a year.

(Total weight of 1 day’s garbage ✖194 school days in a year ➗ Number of students in the school) = (Amount of garbage each student produces in a year)

Our class had 4 team members working on this project including myself, Owen Ngo (Team Leader), Dylan Green, Josh Eardley and Ariane Chartrand. Here we are!

Banting Blue, Black, Compost & Garbage Audit Data

November 2017 Compiled by Owen Ngo Team: Owen Ngo, Dylan Green, Josh Eardley, Arianne Chartrand

Room	Blue bin/5 days*	Black bin/5 days*	Compost/5 days*	Garbage/day*
Rm 1	0.5 Kg	4.5 Kg	200g	3.5g
Rm 2	0.5Kg	0.5Kg	45g	133g
Staff Rm	1Kg	0.5Kg
Rm 4	0.5Kg	2Kg	6g	0g
Rm 5	0.5Kg	3.5g	1500g	383g
Rm 6	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Rm 7	0.5Kg	1.5Kg	55g	27g
Rm 8	1.5Kg	0.5Kg	180g	108g
Rm 9	0.5 Kg	2.5Kg	0g	43g
Rm 10	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Rm 14	0.5Kg	0Kg	35g	16g
Guidance Classroom	0g	1Kg	300g	59g
Safe Schools	2kg	3.5kg	0g	0g
Front Hall	3.5kg	3.5kg	283g	23g
Photocopy Rm	0kg	1.5kg	0g	0g
Office	3.5kg	0.5kg	500g	0g
Student KItchen	1.5kg	3.5kg	180g	0g
Front Washroom (Boys)	0kg	0kg	500g	0g
Front Washroom (Girls)	0kg	0kg	500g	18g
Back Washroom (Boys)	0kg	0kg	500g	28g
Back Washroom (Girls)	0kg	0kg	500g	18g
Staff Washroom 1	0kg	0kg	30g	0g
Staff Washroom 2	0kg	0kg	30g	0g
Staff Washroom 3	0kg	0kg	0g	0g
Total	16.5 kg/5 days*	29 kg/5 days*	5344g= 5.34 kg/5 days*	869.5g= .87 kg/day*

*Note we collect Blue, Black and Compost Weekly on Fridays and the garbage is collected by custodian daily. The weights measured for Blue, Black and Compost are for a previous 5 day period while the garbage is for that day. In the final calculations we converted the Blue, Black and Compost figures into a daily rate.

Diversion rate: The rate or percentage of recyclable material that has been diverted out of the waste disposal stream and therefore not put into landfills.

Diversion Rate = (Total weight of 1 day’s garbage + Total weight of 1 day’s recycling) = (Total Kg of waste)

0.87kg + (16.5kg+29kg+5.34kg)/5 =

0.87 kg + 50.84/5 =

0.87 kg garbage + 10.16 kg recycling =

11.03 kg total waste in 1 day

Total weight of 1 day’s recycling ➗ Total Kg of waste ✖ 100% = Our school’s diversion rate.

10.16 kg total recycling /11.03 kg total waste x100%=

.9211x 100% = 92% Waste Diversion/day

Banting Diversion Rate = 92% Waste Diversion/day

Our schools waste diversion rate is 92% which means 92% of recyclable material has been diverted out of the waste disposal system and therefore NOT put into landfills. Since starting composting in the washrooms our custodians have noted much less garbage than previously!