Educating Tomorrow

Currently at my school we are working on a unit to teach students about garbage and recycling. Here are few of my brainstorm ideas on how we might go about it... I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback:
I have a few ideas for math lessons.

1. I'm sure we can do a lot with the Gone Tomorrow video with statistics: (I'll have to watch the video a 3rd time to make sure I got these right)
a. Only 5% of all plastic is recycled
b. Plastic is produced at 7 times the rate that it is recycled
c. Corporation produce 70 times the amount of waste as individuals
We could follow this grim video up with a few light hearted videos: Simpsons: Trash of the Titans and The Lorax. I have the Lorax and would be happy to buy Gone Tomorrow (I sent you the link before for the video on-line) and Simpson Season 9 DVDs.

2. Recyclables Mobile
Students should do a recycles scavenger hunt in order to solve and display visually their answer to:
1. How many cups are in one gallon? or How many ounces are in one gallon? They could collect 1 gallon, connect that to 4 containers that are size one quart, on each quart hang two pint size objects, on each pint two cups size objects. They could collect these items form their recycling at home and start to display them. We could simultaneously be teaching kids about recycling at home and give them decals etc to set up their own home recycling system. This might inspire students to want to create a school recycling program... we can talk more about this.

3. Calculate waste
Students could take a personal survey for one week tallying all the things they buy, recycle, and throw away. They could use the information to make a table of if everyone in the city (using the population) did the same as them, how much garbage is produced per day, week, month, year, century. We could use the site/art project Running With The Numbers, see: http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php to compare different items that are wasted... show how things can be represent artistically etc.

4. Composting and Worm bins...
Amy has ideas on how to do this with math... estimating, weighing food in and compost out etc... but I'm sure we can incorporate Science and Humanities here. I know BBG has workshops and we might be able to get worm bins for the classroom and use waste from the cafeteria to feed them. I've been talking a few people about this and have two contact that might be willing to help us teach kids about it.

5. Lastly, on the idea of students building a bridge.... perhaps they could do that with reused or recyclable materials... plastic bottles etc?

Just brainstorming ideas here. Looking forward to our next meeting to really flesh these out.

Mick Josi
6th Grade Math Teacher
MS 447 - The Math & Science Exploratory School

"Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead