Exploration Name: Refuse Plastic
Exploration Dates: May 5 – June 17
Essential Question:
- What are solutions to reduce waste?
Learning Facilitator: Max
Number of students: 12
Course Description: We learned about plastic. We spent a lot of time to discuss about what happens to plastic waste. We found that in Cambodia people liked to burn, bury, throw away and put in the landfill. When we burned rubbish it had CO2, which means carbon dioxide.There are a lot of CO2 it increases the chance that global warming, greenhouse effect and drought could happened. When the world have global warming the ice will melt and some animals will lose their habitats because some animals need cold place to live. Example polar bears needed cold place to live, but if we burned rubbish the cold place like Arctic will melt and then polar bears went extinct. Also, when global warming happened the world got hotter and the oceans got hotter too. If the oceans got hotter the animals that in lived in the oceans will die like jelly fish because they like to live in normal climate. When the drought happened and then the organisms will die because all organisms need water to stay a life. Also, when the drought happened the deserts got bigger and it had a lot of winds and sand storms. When we buried it could polluted to the water and soil. So we can’t grew the plants on that soil again. When we threw the rubbish away it could clogged the drain and it could had flood. Why rubbish could clogged the drain because when the rain came the water can’t went through the drain because of rubbish were clogging already. So when rain came a lot and it can’t went through the drain it could have flooding. When we put the rubbish at the landfill the problems were taking a lot of space, have leaching chemical and methane gas. Leaching chemical when the chemical came out slowly from the plastic. Example when the rain came it stayed in the plastic that in the landfill and slowly the chemical came out. This chemical was not good for our health. Methane gas were 21 times more dangerous than CO2.
We researched about solutions that could helped to reduce waste. Our solutions were 3R and 5D. 3R means reduced, reused and recycled. Reduced means used less plastic. Reused means used it again. Example if you have one plastic already don’t threw it away tried to used it again when you went to shopping. Recycle means when you used the plastic already you could put it into factory to made more plastic bags. When you have plastic and you wanted to threw away you have to think could I reduced this plastic. Then you have to think could I reused it and then if you can’t reuse you could recycled it. 5D means define, discovered, design, develop and deploy.
In our class we have other solutions. That solution was reusing plastic. We made many things out of plastic for people to use it. Many students made the bags out of plastic for carried some things when you went to shopping. One student made flowers from the plastic. That flower you could hang it in front of your house or on the table. Our projects were so helpful because all the bags and flowers were the things that people wanted and needed. (You can go to see our blog and then you will see the things that we made and you will know how to do it).
When we used plastic it have benefits too. People used plastic as materials. Plastic we could used it in many different climates. Plastic could packaged food and water and then that food & water will be safe. It can keep the food be fresh. The best reason why people like to used plastic was because plastic doesn’t cost a lot of money.
We had four trips that we went to Phnom Penh. The first trip we went to Lucky market to interview the seller about plastic. The second trip we went to BKK market to interview the sellers and the buyer about plastic. We went there to observe how people used their plastic. We went to Cintri. Cintri is the company that took the rubbish to put at the landfill. The last trip we went to community to ask about plastic and then we took that information to study.
This is our blog: http://refuseplastic.ligercambodiablog.org/