A typical person in the United States creates between four and five pounds of unwanted material every day. This amounts to more than 200 million tons of waste (garbage and trash) each year. Most of this ends up in landfills, places in our communities where waste is buried between layers of soil. Much of what gets thrown out is not biodegradable (by-oh-deh-GRAY-duh-bul). This means it will not break down naturally and become part of the soil—at least not for a very, very long time.

In this lesson, you will learn about different ways we can reduce the amount of waste we create. You will also be introduced to some of the benefits—the good things—that can come from doing so.

Goals
Here are the big ideas you will learn about in this lesson:

• How we manage waste is an important issue in our society.
• People can lessen the pressure on landfills and natural resources by learning to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
• New materials are being developed that address our growing waste problem.

Strategies
You will be using many reading and writing strategies to complete this lesson. The key strategies that you will focus on are:

• Making connections
• Determining important information
• Understanding problem/solution
• Making inferences

• renewable
• reuse

Plastic, metal, and glass are examples of materials that are not biodegradable. In this video, students explain that when we throw away items made from these materials, they remain in our ecosystem—the physical environment in which plants, animals, and other life forms live—for a long time.

Click "View" on the left to watch the video.

After watching the video, list some of the things you threw away yesterday.

• What kinds of materials were these items made of?
• How many things do you think were biodegradable?

To get the most out of things you own and to keep waste out of landfills for as long as possible, consider a solution known as “the three Rs”: reduce, reuse, recycle.

To reduce means to use less of something. One way to avoid creating too much waste is to get as much use as you can from what you already have. When you do buy products, look for those with the least amount of packaging. Packaging, which often gets thrown away, is the container or box a product comes in.

To reuse means to use again. Many items can be reused instead of being thrown away as waste. For example, you might wear a piece of clothing for a year or so. When you outgrow it, instead of throwing it away, you could pass it on to younger sisters or brothers for them to wear, or donate it to charity.

Write down two to three sentences about why it is a good idea to take along reusable bags when you shop at a grocery store.

If you cannot use less of an item or reuse it, think about whether you can recycle it. Recycling is when you take things that you may no longer need and use them (or just their parts) to make new products.

Erin Gately works for Hewlett-Packard (HP) and helps the company protect the environment. Watch this video to see how Erin takes apart and recycles the parts from an HP printer.

Click "View" on the left to watch the video.

In two to three sentences, explain why Erin takes apart computer printers in her job.

Products made from paper, glass, and metals are often recycled into the same type of product. For example, used metal cans are recycled into new metal cans. Old newspapers are recycled to make new newspapers.

But more and more, companies are using materials from one product and turning them into something completely different. For example, the bottoms of rubber sneakers are ground up and spread out under playground equipment to protect children in falls. And plastic water bottles are used to make fleece jackets. These new products made from recycled materials are turning out to be just as good as those made from new materials.

Companies that make products benefit from using recycled materials in two important ways. First, recycled parts cost less than new parts. Second, it takes much less energy—as much as 95 percent less—to make something using recycled materials than it does to start from scratch. This saves money and benefits the environment.

In this video, Erin and another engineer explain how their company has designed prototypes (PRO-tuh-types), or early examples, of two new printers. One is made entirely of recycled plastic. The other is made of a new biodegradable material made from corn instead of plastic. This means that old printer parts that would normally spend many years in a landfill will biodegrade instead.

Click "View" on the left to watch the video.

After watching the video, describe in one to two sentences how a product made from corn can help the environment.

In this lesson, you’ve learned that the three Rs—reduce, reuse, recycle—are like tools we can use to limit the waste we produce. Now you will read about two more Rs that we can add to our toolbox: resist and repair.

Click "View" on the left to open the reading passage.

After reading the passage, write down one to two sentences explaining why resisting and repairing can help the environment.

The videos you have seen and the text you have read explored how following the three Rs—reduce, reuse, and recycle—can help protect our environment.

Now show what you have learned so far about waste and ways to deal with it by answering these three questions. Be sure to save all your answers before you go to the next screen.

You will now check your understanding of the vocabulary words for this lesson by placing them in sentences. Click "View" on the left to begin the activity.

Before moving to the next screen, choose two words from the vocabulary list and write a new sentence for each word.

Vocabulary words: biodegradable, recycle, reduce, renewable, reuse

In this activity, you will read more about the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle), especially as they relate to natural resources—the materials we take from the environment to produce the things we use in our lives. Natural resources include water, trees, and minerals. You will then highlight parts of the passage to answer two related questions.

Click "View" on the left to begin the activity. Your teacher will review the answers with you.

Then, before moving on to the final assignment, you may want to watch this lesson's videos again.

Students Making a Difference

Video: 0m 48s

View

Recycle—Breaking It Down

Video: 1m 10s

View

Designing Products for Less Waste

Video: 1m 01s

View

In this lesson, you have learned some of the ways people and companies can reduce the pressure on landfills and natural resources. You will now write an essay that shares what you have learned and what you think about it.

Begin by reviewing your notes. Click "review my work" above and view or print out the screen that pops up.

Final Assignment Instructions

• Click Using the 3Rs to Help the Environment—Final Assignment (PDF).
• Choose one of the topics in the PDF and write an essay.
• Organize your response so that it includes at least three supporting details that you have learned from the reading passage, videos, and other materials in this lesson.
• Use at least three vocabulary words (or a form of the words) as part of your supporting details. For example, for the word jump, you could use jumps, jumped, or jumping.