Our 4th grade classes at Oakland Elementary School studied our behavior with buying and disposing of trash.  We first collected and counted our snack trash that we made Monday-Friday in the classroom.  We researched ways we could change our family's buying habits in order to make wiser decisions.  Our goal was to make less paper and plastic trash the following week.  We needed to reuse plastic containers, buy in bulk, package things ourselves and try to eat fresh fruit instead of little pop-top cans or containers and fruit roll-ups that are prepackaged.  Why not just bring the apple or the orange or the pear...not much to throw away after we eat that! 

 

We looked at how people around the world were being creative with the 3 R's (recycling, reducing, and reusing) and then we got a little creative ourselves.  Not only did we want to utilize the 3 R's, we wanted to look around our neighborhoods and find ways to make them better. 

 

We wrote ACTION PLANS!  First, we stated the problem we saw in our world.  Second, we wrote about our idea for solving the problem and how we could do it step by step.  We considered problems and possible stumbling blocks.  Finally, we stated what happened.

 

Here are a few of our ideas:

We could collect plastic bags from our neighbors and give them re-useable bags instead.  We could clean up our playgrounds and parks with our friends and families and think of ways to make them better. We could be part of a "Lake Sweep" to clean up Lake Bowen using boats and gathering all the paper trash.  Ideas started flowing and we had fun teaming up with our classmates and our parents to start making things happen!

 

Check out the pictures below to see ways we saved the world!