Garbage - also called waste - ends up in landfills. Landfills are huge pits in the ground where garbage trucks bring the waste we throw away. We are running out of room in landfills because a lot of the stuff we throw away takes hundreds or even thousands of years to decompose (break down). Some of the stuff we throw away has chemicals in it that can pollute our water and land.
Explore Environmental Elementary for waste-reducing tips.
- Carry your lunch to school in a re-usable bag instead of a plastic bag. You can even use your backpack! This means fewer plastic bags are wasted.
- An average school-age kid in Ontario makes 30 kg of waste from their lunch every school year. Do the math; if there are 25 kids in your class, your class accumulates 737 kg of waste each year - that's as heavy as a car!
- Tonnes of plastic waste like sandwich baggies and wrappers are dumped in the ocean every year. Animals like dolphins and sea turtles try to eat the plastic because they think it is food. This causes them to get sick or even die. Plastic waste in the wrong place can do a lot of harm!
- Garbage goes to landfills that are usually bigger than 100 soccer fields! In Ontario we send approximately 10 million tonnes of garbage to landfills each year - the equivalent in weight of one million school buses!
- Ask your parents to buy snacks like applesauce, yogurt or chips in big packages. Put a little bit of food from the large package in a re-usable container to bring your snack to school. This will help reduce packaging waste and keep the planet clean!
- Are those gym clothes and shoes getting a bit small for you? Don't throw them away! What a waste of landfill space. Clothes and shoes can be donated to help kids who really need them.
- Hey, is that a sparkly button? I see a scrap of cool printed fabric! Check out all the treasures in the Scrap Box. They're just waiting to be made into crafts. What a great way to keep all those neat things from going to waste!
- Never throw batteries in the garbage! They contain chemicals like acid that can leak into the land and water. Find out how you can take them to a depot to be safely disposed of.
- Did you know a lot of ink cartridges can be refilled and used over and over again? This is way better than throwing them away every time the ink runs out.
