Together With
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Garbage: What’s the Big Deal?
Together With
Make a list of everything you have thrown away today and everything you might throw away later.
Make a list of everything you have recycled today.
How much do you think the average American throws away each day?
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How Much Do You Throw Away?
Where does garbage go
when you’re done with it?
Where do recycled materials go?
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Where Does Garbage Go?
a. China
b. Russia
c. India
d. United States
Did you know that 195 million tons of garbage gets tossed out each year by Americans?
That’s enough to fill 108,000 garbage trucks!
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Which Country Produces the Most Trash Per Person in the World?
a. Three Years
b. 50-100 Years
c. 200-500 Years
d. 1,000 Years
It takes most aluminum cans between 200 and 500 years to decompose. This means that if
George Washington threw away a soda can, it would still be around today!
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How Long Does It Take An Aluminum Can to Decompose?
a. 25,000b. 100,000c. 250,000d. 1,000,000
That means that over 131 billion cans are made per year in the United States each year.
That’s 437 cans per person!
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How Many Aluminum Cans Are Made in the US Every Minute?
a. 10 Yearsb. 1,000 Yearsc. 3,000 Yearsd. It Never Decomposes
That means that if the Egyptians had thrown away a glass bottle while building the Great Pyramids, that bottle would still be around
today!
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How Long Does a Glass Bottle Take to Decompose?
How Long Does It Take Americans To Throw Away Enough Glass To Fill a
Sky Scraper?
a. 1 Month
b. 1 Year
c. 2 Years
d. 6 Months
That means that each month we must find somewhere to put a pile of glass as big as a
skyscraper!8
How Long Does It Take a Plastic Bottle To Decompose?
a. It never decomposes.
b. 1,000 Years
c. 100,000 Years
d. 1 Million Years
That means that any plastic bottles we throw away today will pollute the Earth for all of our
ancestors for the next 1 million years!
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How Many Plastic Bottles Do People In The United States Throw Away Each
Hour?
a. 10,000
b. 1 Million
c. 2 Million
d. 10 MillionThat’s 60 million plastic bottles per day! The
liquid from all of those bottles could fill a swimming pool 10 feet deep, 24 feet wide, and
one mile long!10
Comparison
Material Decomposition Time
Amount thrown away
per dayAluminum 200-500 years 130,000,000 cans
Glass Will not decompose 36,000,000 bottles
Plastic 1 million years 60,000,000 bottles
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Where It All Ends Up
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Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Click the link below to view a video from the Associated Press about massive pockets of garbage forming in our oceans.
Recycle, Reduce, Reuse
How can each of these actions help fix the garbage problem in the United States?
Think of the last time you recycled. What other products are you able to recycle?
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Activity: Today’s Waste
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Source for Factual Material
• NDEP. "How Long Does Trash Last." NevadaRecycles.gov. Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. Web. 12 Sept. 2011. <http://nevadarecycles.gov>.
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