How much rubbish is there @ TIS?

Room 15 began our unit on stats by conducting a statistical investigation into the amount of rubbish in our school.

Introduction

With over 500 students bringing their lunch to school, that's a lot of wrappers, bottles and food waste coming into our school. Most students put their rubbish in the bins but there is still a bit of rubbish around the school. But how much litter is there at TIS? Room 15 set out to find out the location and types of rubbish found. 

Data Collection

From Tuesday to Thursday last week our class measured up 2m squares at seven separate locations around the school. We used squares so that we could compare the amounts of rubbish in different areas in the school. The class then counted the amount of and different types of rubbish in the school twice a day, once before morning tea and then again after morning tea.

Location of Rubbish

According to our results, the quad and the PE shed are areas where there is a lot of litter with the PE shed having an average of 16 pieces of Rubbish in the square and the Quad having 14 pieces of the Rubbish. The PE shed square included a rubbish bin which indicates that students are not putting their rubbish in the bin properly! 

The place with the least amount of Rubbish was out the front of Room 15 with an average of only 3 pieces of rubbish found over the three days. There also wasn't very much rubbish found behind Room 15 which is out of bounds to students at lunch time.

Different Types of Rubbish

Wrappers and gladwrap was the most common types of rubbish found in our survey.  37% of the total amount of rubbish that Room 15 counted was made up of wrappers while gladwrap made up 17%. Foodwaste only made up 10% of the rubbish that we found.

Conclusion

We found a large amount of rubbish in our school with more rubbish found after morning tea than before. The small amount found behind Room 15 shows that most of the rubbish found in our school is from TIS students rather than the wind blowing it down from the College.

The quad and PE shed are areas where more bins could be placed. We also think that TIS students need to make sure that they are putting their rubbish in the bin. A campaign could be used to reduce the amount of wrappers that students bring to school. The school could also investigate the use of a worm form to reduce the amount of food waste.

In conclusion, there are different ways that we can keep our school free from rubbish.