Grade 8 WASTE PLASTICS PROJECT

Our class, Ms Carter’s Gr 8 Science class, did a “Waste Plastics Project”. For a week, we had to collect plastics that we were going to throw away and bring them to class. The day we chose to do our tally was on Wednesday, 20/08/2008.

We left all our plastics in a corner of the science lab, and they piled up into a heap as big as a mountain!
Items collected included plastic bottles, containers, snack wrappers, plastic bags and so on. With the help of our fellow classmates, we separated all the collected items
into different categories, and placed them around the lab accordingly.

By the end of the categorizing, there were massive piles of plastic items spread across the desks. Who would have guessed that just twenty families had already amassed such a large amount of plastic waste in just a week?! Imagine just how much more plastic would have been wasted across Singapore!!

TABLE TO SHOW WASTE PLASTICS COLLECTED:




As you can see from the results of our “WASTE PLASTICS PROJECT”, the amount of plastic that is wasted is huge and should be seen as a GREAT cause for concern!

Here are a few ways YOU can help cut down on the amount of waste plastic without drastically altering your lifestyle:

1) When you get takeaway from hawker centres, the vendor will usually pack your food in plastic containers. The next time you get food from the hawker centre, you should bring along the plastic containers you received the last time and ask the vendors to put your food in those you brought instead of giving you more.

2) The next time you go grocery shopping, bring along an eco-friendly cloth bag or a rucksack to put your groceries in, instead of using plastic bags.

3) If you get drinks in plastic bottles, you should reuse those plastic
bottles as your drinking bottles or throw them in the recycling bin.

But the easiest way to cut down on buying drinks packed in plastic bottles is simply not to buy them! Besides, those drinks are nothing but sugar and completely unnecessary anyway!

4) DO NOT USE PLASTIC UTENSILS. Use steel utensils instead.

Now, you have no excuse to waste plastic ever again!

Did you know…??
* Singapore’s landfill sites are located at Ulu Pandan, Pulau Semakau, Senoko, Tuas and Tuas South.

* One of Singapore’s landfill sites, Tuas South, is one of the largest in the world.
Plastic cannot biodegrade. Plastic waste thus takes up a lot of landfill space.

* Pulau Semakau (Singapore’s newest landfill site) is expected to last until 2030 – only slightly over twenty years from now. However, if the amount of waste produced in Singapore continues to rise, the lifespan of the Pulau Semakau landfill might be shorter than expected.