The "Problem" Portion of our Board

Research Question: We are investigating how recycling is related to energy use in our everyday life, and what the significance is when applied to reducing, reusing and recycling.


Hypothesis: We believe that energy can be saved using the recycling. However, even if this is true, we must make recycling more prevalent because people do not recycle to the full extent that they could. People may have distored perception of the costs and benefits of recycling. We hypothesis that even though recycling is well known and people are aware of it, they may not realize exactly how much they could benefit the world.

Trash Can experiment: We will pick 5 trashcans in the school. If there is a recycle bin next to them, for the first week we will take this away. For three days, we will go through the trash and see how many recyclables are NOT being recycled, and are thrown away. The next week, we will place recycle bins next to the trash cans, and do the same process, only this time we will also see how many recylables were recycled.

Survey:
Here are the following questions:
Do you recycle?
Do you own a recycling bin?
What do you recycle?
Circling recyclables: Tin foil, cigarette butts, plastic bottles, glass bottles, window glass, plastic caps, toothpaste tubes, Styrofoam plates, aerosol cans, wax paper, wrapping paper
Do you ever reuse items? Is so, what? If not, why?