Recyle Observation

Another assignment is to be an undercover spy: secretly note & document waste in one class. Students need to write up ways to reduce and reuse some of the materials. Estimate the cost of unnecessary wastes and how much the teacher, the school, or tax payers could have saved if certain changed have been made.

The following is Jordan's finding: 
Location: A class at WSUTC 

For my recyclable material documentation, I observed how much recyclable material is used during my X class. This is a class that utilizes a lot of paper. On one day, each of the 35-40 students was given 2 sheets of paper – one with print and one without. That is about 80 pieces of paper! To make things worse, this class period was actually relatively little paper use compared to other days. As I looked around the classroom, I saw printed paper and posters on the walls. One grouping of paper was about 40 printed sheets – one from each student – that we had put up on the wall as a previous assignment. School posters for notices and clubs were also displayed in the classroom. These were not for the class, itself, but were certainly put up and funded by the school.


Ways that we could reduce the amount of waste would be to use both sides of the paper handouts. We could simply use less paper in general. Our papers on the wall could have been eliminated as well. We could have used half-sheets of paper, or written on the board instead. Classroom posters could be replaced by something electronic or words written on the board.

Based on my estimates and observations charted below, I would estimate that the teacher/school/taxpayers would save $18.50 in this one class alone if it was paperless. Is this a possible goal? Can a class be paperless? I am not sure. Paper waste, however, needs to be reduced.