What happens to the contents of your recycle bin?
Take this insider’s tour of a recycling plant.
NGSS: ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems, ETS1.A: Defining and Delimiting an Engineering Problem, ETS2.B: Influence of Engineering, Technology, and Science on Society and the Natural World.
Common Core State Standards:CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.3, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.3, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9–10.3, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11–12.3
Every day at the Sims Municipal Recycling facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, roughly 800 tons of recyclables meander through a tangle of machines, scanners, and conveyor belts. Mountains of discarded metals, glass, and plastic are sifted, sorted, and bundled into bails, eventually transforming into marketable commodities.
Questions
- Which sorter would be best for your recycling bin right now?
- Create a diagram or drawing of the Sims sorting machine. Be sure to label the different sorting areas and describe the sorting mechanism.
- What materials are being sorted and bundled at Sims Municipal Recycling?
- At the end of the sorting process bales are formed from the sorted material. Why would someone want these materials? Brainstorm some uses for one or more of the materials.
- Thomas Outerbridge mentions that 40% of recyclable materials are still going into the trash. What are some ways to reduce that amount in your community? Develop one of those ideas and present it to your school for implementation.
Activity Suggestions
- Luke Groskin describes the recycling process at Sims as “very mechanized”. Use this as inspiration for students to design and prototype a machine that can sort different items. (Think practical Rube Goldberg machines!) Start by having students document each sorting stage in the video. What would they sort? What properties of each material is the machine using to sort them?
- Pair the video with the article, Five Facts About Recycling, and radio segment below, where Darby Hoover and Luke Groskin answer some recycling mysteries. Afterwards, have students create a campaign and collection to increase recycling of specific materials.
Related Media
How do we make sure our clothing is durable? Check out the machines and processes for textile quality assurance.
How do you engineer the perfect pop? We asked a paper engineer.
Originally published at www.sciencefriday.com on July 22, 2016.
