Dear JICS Families,
We are the Grade 2 class at JICS. We had a hatchery for Atlantic salmon in our classroom for three months. We learned a lot about Atlantic salmon. We also learned how we are harming their environment. One of the ways is our waste – garbage and recycling.
At JICS we can help make a difference. We can separate our plastics and paper so that they are recycled properly and will not end up in the landfill. We wrote about our learning below.
Four Bins
The four bins we should have at school are a paper bin, garbage bin, a compost bin and a plastics bin. When we recycle paper and plastic it recycles differently. Paper is dumped into a tub of water and the paper is broken down into pieces and then it can be made into new paper. Plastic is made into blocks and then it is melted and molded into different items like a plastic chair or even clothes!
Did you know there is no away for plastic?
Plastic never goes away. It just gets smaller and smaller and smaller.
A lot of people in this world are wasting plastic. If you waste plastic you are being bad to the environment. If you litter with plastic or throw it away in the wrong place an animal can eat it. If an animal eats plastic, the animal thinks it is full but it really isn’t and then it will probably die of hunger. If you keep doing that, then there will be no animals that you can eat. This will damage the food chain. If you litter with plastic, you can contaminate the world and if we keep on doing that, then the world can overflow with garbage and plastic.
If you put plastic in the water, it will travel through the watershed. The plastic will then hurt animals and can contaminate the water. As the plastic breaks down, the little tiny bits of the plastic can get stuck in the gills of fish and it will be hard for them to breathe. This could impact many other animals too. We read an article about a whale that ate a lot of plastic and it died.
The ocean and the lakes are not garbage or recycling bins!
We are trying to reduce the amount of plastic because it can hurt animals and us!
The Five R’s
These are the five R’s: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and repeat!
Refuse – If you are at a restaurant and you order a milkshake and a glass of water and they both come with a straw, you only need one straw, not two! You can clean off the straw and reuse it. This way you will refuse the other straw. You might not even need a straw – so then you can completely refuse! Or, you can bring your own reusable straws!
Reduce – Use less plastic by buying less plastic. Instead of buying a plastic water bottle, use a reusable bottle.
Imagine there is a sink overflowing with water, first you will turn off the tap to reduce the amount of water. Now imagine, the water is the plastic that we use. We need to stop the use of plastic. This means we need to turn off the tap and then clean up the water. So, we need to stop using plastic and then clean up the mess of plastic.
Reuse – Imagine you have pants with a hole in it. You also see a bit of towel. Instead of throwing the pants out and making more garbage. Take the bit of towel and put it on your broken pants and sew it really well and then you will have better pants and not damage the environment!
Recycle - Put plastic in the recycling bin so it can be recycled properly. We learned that black plastic cannot be put into the recycling because the conveyer belt that moves the plastic is black and the people who are sorting out the items into the bins will not see the black plastic.
Repeat – Don’t just do this once and think, “I am finished my job”. Do the cycle many times. Don’t give up and don’t stop! So, we don’t harm the earth and we help the environment.
Thank you for reading!
By the Grade Two Class
