recycle right.​
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Grades 5-7

Tutorial 1. The Story of Recycling

Objective: Figure out how much waste your household diverts from the landfill and identify the ways you do it.

The Path to Zero Waste
Is it possible to live in a city that does not generate any waste? What is meant by the term zero waste?  Zero waste means significantly reducing the amount of waste a person, a family or a community sends to the landfill.  How significant? Well that answer changes depending on who you ask.  
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To the City of Oceanside it means reducing landfill waste to just 10%-25% of all the waste generated by schools, businesses and residents. With the help of the City’s waste hauler, Waste Management, that is exactly what they are planning to do. 

What will happen to the other 75-90% of the waste generated? Residents, business professionals and students at schools will all use strategies such as recycling and composting to divert most waste from the landfill. The City will also have to encourage some important behavior changes, too. 

These Recycle Right tutorials are designed to give students tips and resources to achieve the City’s zero waste goals. And, because recycling is one of the strongest drivers in waste reduction, we’ll start there. 

Waste Mismanagement 
When it came to managing waste, humankind was off to a good start. Our ancestors made use of every part of plants and animals for food, warmth and tools. Even our first farmers knew their crops were more successful when they used the waste from farm animals to fertilize their fields. In fact, problems with accumulating waste didn’t start to develop until people began living closer together in cities. 

​During early times, city streets were covered with garbage, animal, and human waste. Rats roamed the streets in search of food. This eventually contributed to the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic in history, which claimed the lives of 45-60% of the population in Europe. The plague was so deadly that there weren’t enough people to bury the dead.

The Road to Recycling
Recycling has always been a thing, our ancestors just didn’t give it a name. A long time ago, products could not be made quickly and cheaply, so just about everyone practiced recycling and reuse in some form because they really didn’t have a choice. 
Ripped clothing was mended and handed down from one generation to the next. When clothing was literally falling apart, it was made into other items, like blankets and rags.  

During the American Revolution, Paul Revere collected old bells and iron kettles so they could be made into bullets and armor. Americans were asked to salvage metal from their homes and canned foods during World War II in order to build ships, airplanes and other wartime equipment. Recycling was considered patriotic!

Convenience Contributes to Waste Accumulation
How did recycling become the way it is now and why? With improved technological advances in the mid-19th century, all sorts of products became much easier and cheaper to make on a mass scale. 

By the 1950’s, disposable items flooded the market. Single-use products like plastic cups, plastic bags, plastic forks, water packaged in plastic bottles and single serving yogurt cups have only grown in popularity and have become part of the five pounds of waste Americans create every day! 

Pigs and Waste Reduction

During the Industrial Revolution, workers suddenly had more income and were able to feed their families well. Bacon became a desirable food source and pig farmers had a difficult time keeping up with the demand.  They didn’t have enough feedstock for their pigs.

Pig farmers realized food scraps from people's homes could be a source of food for their pigs.  And so pig farmers began collecting food scraps in neighborhoods around their farms.

Unfortunately, the food scraps weren’t so great for keeping pigs fat and healthy, and as a result, the quality of bacon deteriorated.  People stopped buying bacon!

The pig farmers quickly realized their future might not be in pigs, but it might be in collecting waste.  After all, they had trucks and homes where people were giving them food scraps, otherwise known as wet waste; why not pick up all their waste?

​For homeowners, it was a better solution than burning it in the backyard.  People began buying trash cans and having their waste picked up at their house. Many large waste companies today started out as pig farmers.

Recycling to the Rescue
All of that waste piles up in landfills across the country. Landfills take up an enormous amount of space, and they fill up fast. When they fill up, we make more landfills. This is a problem because we only have so much land to use for our waste. We also use up many of our natural resources by making more and more single use products. Recycling old products into new ones addresses both issues. Less landfill space is needed if we don't throw away disposable items. We also conserve valuable resources like oil, water and energy when we turn existing materials into new items. Recycling is the HERO in this story!

Today, the City of Oceanside works with Waste Management, whose state-of-the-art recycling facility processes thousands of pounds of recyclable material each and every day. Residents and businesses enjoy the convenience of curbside pick up of glass, plastics, aluminum cans and paper recyclables. The City of Oceanside also makes it easy to recycle by placing clearly marked recycling bins in most parks and public spaces

Tutorial Challenge

The City of Oceanside is working toward becoming a Zero Waste City. That means they are aiming to divert 75-90% of the waste collected throughout the City away from the landfill. They use many strategies, like recycling and composting.  

1. Look through each of your waste containers at home (blue, gray and green), and estimate what percentage of your household waste is going to the landfill. Is it between 10-25%,  like Oceanside’s goal?  
2. What strategies do you already use with your family to divert waste at home? 

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