Exhibition project
The Waste changers
5th grade
Group 4
Mentora: Christina Chiriboga
2023-2024
Einstein School
Who we are
Renata
Felipe
We are Fifth-grade students passionate about the environment.
Sarita
Why did we choose the topic?
We chose this topic because we saw a lot of people throwing away resources like food, clothes, batteries, and money.
So we want to stop the waste that humans produce.
What inspired us:
Sarita
Our Central Idea
Renata
Transdisciplinary theme: Sharing the planet
Felipe
Sarita
The way we relate to others and to
the environment impacts all living beings
Lines of Inquiry
and key concepts
- How can we use less stuff and change?
- How can we be conscious about waste, can we share instead of tossing, being smarter about waste?
- As a writer, an individual takes responsibility for waste. How does it influence their consumption habits and overall environmental awareness?
Felipe
Change
Connection Responsability
Questions:
Felipe
Change Connection Responsability
Big Questions:
- How do people you manage waste at Home?
- Are people aware of organization that manage waste in Quito?
- What can we do as kids to help redure waste?
For example: in my home, we all classify trash. Do you classify trash?
Our attributes
Renata
Sarita
Felipe
The attribute as communicator, we were able to talk about the problem of waste.
We were open-minded as we had to be open to new ideas and suggestions.
We had to think about what we learned and how to use it in our daily life.
Our logo and
Slogan
Renata
Our slogan:
Felipe
“Zero waste is a
journey”
Our Action
Pinto Factory
You all know what this PINTO….
In Pinto's interview we learned that they make cotton t-shirts and that cotton comes from a plant. They also use solar panels to not waste so much energy because they use a lot of energy. They also told us that they use a lot of water but they have a water purification plant that separates the bad from the good in the water and sends the good to the rivers.
Interview
Fabric Waste
Pinto
All the clothing factories cut the fabrics, but this is where most of the waste is produced because when the fabric is cut there are a lot of pieces of leftover fabric. Sometimes people buy the leftovers and they make rags with them, but other times no one buys them and the factories throw them out to the trash. Also, factories need to color the fabrics with special colorants and for that they use 4 liters of water to color 5 t-shirts. The water that is dirty goes to a small pool and it stays there because they don't use it anymore. Sometimes that water transforms into mud and they use that mud to improve the
Eco centro
Food waste
It is a place specialized in composting techniques from organic waste. They work everyday to improve the environmental conditions of the city. They teach in an easy and fun way how to make your own homemade compost by using organic waste. They food they produce, the send to a food bank.
Food waste
Eco centro
We take responsibility of our actions and we do our work
We learned about compost. We can use the skins of fruits and vegetables and this way we can create less waste and less pollution. Because when we don't separate the food from the common trash everything gets dirty and contaminated from the liquids of the food
with trash.
We visited CEGAM: Centros de Educación y Gestión Ambiental
●The CEGAM of Tumbaco is an
Environmental Management Center of the Municipality of Quito. What the environmental managers do is classify the city's waste. We spoke with the environmental managers and they explained to us how waste should be classified. Materials should be classified according to the material they are made of.
● ●
●We learned that materials can be
classified for sale according to their weight.
Tumbaco
We even went viral on their facebook
page
●
●
●
Thomas Cadenbach
PhD
Interview
He is a Chemist Professor at San Francisco University and is an expert on batteries. He explained to us how to properly dispose batteries and how to recycle them correctly. In this interview we learned what components make up batteries and what materials are dangerous.
Our first visit: Recycling laboratory
Shyris Avenue
The recycling laboratory is an environmental education center and a place where they collect different type of waste like bottles, tetra pak etc. With the tetra pak, detergent bottles and hard plastic they build greenhouses. With these materials they also make bricks that already come with holes for the cables.
made with tetra pack!!!
Hanaska
(food waste in our
school)
Interview
●The product that we waste the
most are vegetables and fruits
All the waste food goes directly to the environmental dealer, that feed pigs, with all the food that gets wasted from our Cafeteria.
WHY REDUCING WASTE IS CRUCIAL?
REFLECTION
Waste of money and resources
I am going to talk to you about the waste of money and
resources and those can be natural resources such as water,
oil and trees. For this I am going to start with an example with
something that you have used and seen and it is a plastic
bottle.
2. Do you know what the process of this is? It is called circular
economy and linear economy.
The linear economy is buy use and throw and it is what most people do, but the circular economy is buy use and recycle so the difference between these economies is that the circular economy helps the planet, so that we do not harm the planet more, on the other hand, the linear economy is more harmful to the planet because I throw away the bottle and do not recycle, so we should do the circular economy.
Gestor Ambiental
WASTE OF MONEY AND RESOURCES
When people answer that they classify plastic bottles, I tell them that they help environmental managers and environment in general. But then I ask if they would throw a dollar to the trash
can, they say no! But if I told you that bottles are worth money?
Environmental managers bring a ton of bottles in their truck and sell them to factories that make new bottles with the
bottles you give them and that ton costs 100 dollars.
WASTE OF MONEY AND RESOURCES
When people answer that they simply throw the plastic bottles to the trash can, well, most people do that and it doesn't make it any easier for environmental managers, but you would waste a dollar?, no, right?. But you know that you are also wasting money
because the bottles are money and
environmental managers, when they collect a
ton of bottles, they sell to factories that make
new bottles with the other bottles and pay you
100 dollars per ton.
Waste of batteries
1 what does an alkaline battery have?
Alkaline batteries contain zinc paste and potassium hydroxide as an electrolyte, which is found in a matrix of magnesium dioxide. In addition to the casing, which is made of plastic, metal, and in some cases it can be of paper. And its weight may change according to its size.
What materials are the most
dangerous in an alkaline battery?
In this research I have been doing, I have found that the most dangerous materials contained in an alkaline battery are zinc (Zn) and manganese dioxide (MnO2) which is a neurotoxin and can be toxic in higher concentrations. Also
cobalt can cause cancer.
Incorrect handling of the batteries may lead to an accidental release of liquid, overheating or explosion and can cause chemical burns.
What is the impact of alkaline batteries in the environment?
I found out that just one battery that is not well
disposed or thrown to the environment, can
contaminate water sources such as rivers and all
living things that take contact with that water may
die.
Mining is the process to obtain the minerals to
make batteries. Mining causes erosion, loss of
biodiversity, contamination of soil, groundwater,
and surface water by chemicals emitted from
mining processes.
How can we recycle alkaline batteries
correctly?
In one of the interviews with a battery expert he told us what we can do to dispose them correctly and how to recycle them. He told us that the best way to dispose them is that we store the batteries without energy in a glass or plastic container and that when there is no more space in it we deliver it to an environmental manager.
The expert told us that once the battery is without energy, it is melted, then crushed to dust. Then the black dust is sent to a big sifter, which is responsible for separating metals such as aluminum, manganese and more.
With the separated metals new sheets
are created and with the residual black
powder new sheets can be made to
cover the new batteries.
DATA
We made a survey to Jorge Grijalva, Gerardo Romo, Lisa Mandel and Mariale Azacón to know more about recycling in our school.
Here are the results…
COLLECTED
OUR WEBSITE
ZERO WASTE LIFESTYLE
OUR WEBSITE
OUR GROUP’S
REFLECTION
In this project we learned so many things like knowing where our trash goes and how is the correct way to classify it correctly.
And we also learned that the people that
work recycling the trash, help the
environment and can do a lot of new things
from waste.
We learned many things like how to make
compost and to classify trash.
Also, we helped each other in the bad and
good things. We also had some fights, but in
Student Planner:
Sara Feijoo
Renata mantilla