Wow! Just look at this box of junk mail! We collected the advertisement circulars and other (mostly) unwanted stuff that flooded our mail boxes this past week. Today we weighed it all, used math to find a family average, and came up the fact that 3.5 pounds gets delivered to the average household in one week. That's 182 pounds per year per family, or a whopping 2730 pounds for our entire classroom.
We talked about the energy and paper waste that occurs. The paper used is the obvious one, but we also considered the fuel it takes to deliver all of this paper, and the pollution that is the result.
Children brainstormed what can be done with all this paper. They decided that they could reUSE the paper with art and school projects, like making posters and collages. We can use it for scrap paper, or even make more paper from it (we will do this in the future). Then, after getting at least one more use of it, the paper can go into reCYCLE bin.
I told the students that we could also reDUCE the amount of junk mail printed by calling or emailing the companies responsible and telling them not to send advertisements ("opt out").
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