Recycle. Reuse. Reduce.

January brings a new year, resolutions, and in ImpACT, the Story of Stuff. What is the Story of Stuff you might ask? Well, it is a class about how natural resources get transformed into consumer products, where plastics and paper come from, and how we can generally reduce the trash we create. We spent two weeks in January learning about how things get manufactured and recycled. By the end of the class the students were not only able to sort out piles of paper, plastic and trash into its respective place but they were also able to explain what natural resources make the things we use every day. The second week of this unit highlighted different types of energy and water conservation. But the best part of this unit was making our own recycled paper. We put different pieces of scratch paper and newspapers in a blender, added water, and voila! Minutes later after using a screen to drain the water we made our own recycled paper! No need to buy paper from Office Depot Mom! I can make my own!