Cleaner coasts

Subjects: Maths, Science
Years: 7–8, 9–10

Rubbish and the disposal of rubbish is an ongoing problem in many countries around the world.

Should things be re-used, recycled, incinerated at high temperature or sent to landfill? How long does rubbish last in the environment? What damage does it cause?

These are ongoing questions, especially when we hear that some discarded materials take many years to break down and can end up in the food chain, through various means, especially through waterways.

Things to think about

  1. Every day we produce mountains of rubbish from our normal daily activities. Some rubbish is biodegradable and some can be recycled, but the rest ends up in rubbish dumps or the environment. Make a preliminary survey of the places in your school where rubbish accumulates. Consider sports fields, fence lines and garden areas, as well as the outside of buildings. Using a printed school map, or a web map of the school, divide the yard into survey regions. Get into groups and allocate yourselves to each region. You will need to decide how to categorise the amount of rubbish rather than trying to measure it (e.g. lots, some, small amount, none).

  2. Think about where rubbish collects in your school yard. What would happen to the rubbish that accumulates around your school if it was never cleaned up? Estimate how much rubbish is in each section of a region. What is the best way to represent this information?

  3. Conduct an audit of the rubbish that gathers around the school, working in the groups of your allocated regions. There are several ways to represent the information. For example, superimposing a heat map over the school map to highlight the messiest through to the cleanest areas. Information on heat maps can be found on the internet or your school library. Alternatively, the school regions could be colour-coded by hand, rather than using a computer. Another possibility is to use a dot distribution map, where the size of the dots indicates the amount of rubbish gathered in each different place. Compare the different types of representations for their effectiveness in communicating the information. You will need to decide how to categorise the amount of rubbish (i.e. not actually counting it). For the purposes of a heatmap, a minimum of three categories is needed. One suggestion might be: nil, light, medium or heavy. You could take some photographs of typical examples to help reach agreement. Decide at what distances (or areas) the categorisation should occur (e.g. every two metres along a fence or building line, over 5-metre squares on the oval).

  4. Discuss the information you have found. Are there any particularly bad areas for rubbish? Are there areas that are very clean? What factors might be contributing? Develop a school action plan to keep the yard clean. Some factors affecting where rubbish collects may include location (e.g. near the canteen or dedicated eating areas), school design (e.g. isolated areas, type of fencing, garden beds) or local conditions (e.g. prevailing winds, proximity to a shopping centre or main road). You may want to think about where the bins should be. Are there enough? Are there recycling bins? Can 'catchment areas' be improved?


Video © UTS Maths Inside.

Production Date: 2018


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