Last week we introduced a fun activity that taught youth the importance of having a garbage disposal and how a little machine like that can create lots of environmental benefits for their cities. We first taught them how the city waste system works, explaining that upwards of 30 million tons of food waste in America go to landfills each year and end up producing harmful gases in the environment. Then we proceeded to explain that by using a garbage disposal, which is a machine that is installed under the kitchen sink that grinds food into tiny particles which are sent to sewers, cities are able to take that sewage and process it into a fertilizer product or renewable energy. In other words it’s using the existing waste system to process food waste in a much greener method.
As part of the activity we taught them how to install a garbage disposal. We believe that by learning to install one, they will understand the value and they will bring this learning with them down the road. We would like to thank Grind That Garbage for providing us with phenomenal support and resources for our activity.
In a brainstorming exercise we asked the youth if they could think of new ways to process food waste in a green approach. Some of the youth mentioned the idea of composting which we were pleased to hear. Many of these students have already been attending our programs for months so we were happy to know that they’ve been learning quite a lot. For example, in our last post we mentioned that they were learning how to control the carbon emissions that they make and we’ve been discussing ways to turn the carbon emissions that they do make into something useful. They’ve made bottle composts in the past and we challenged them to think of new ways to make composting viable in the long run for thousands of residents. Who knows! They may even be able to come up with some serious applications for them in real life.
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