Health 6

Date: Sept. 23, 2021

Let’s Learn
You can all make a difference in reducing waste at home, in school,
and in your communities. Practice using the 3 R's of waste reduction
- reduce, reuse, and recycle - you can all do your part.
All of you in every community can work together and reduce waste.
Each of you can make a difference by reducing, reusing, and recycling
materials throughout your communities and encouraging your neighbors to
do the same.

Have you been consistent in segregating your waste?

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Waste, or rubbish, trash, junk, garbage, depending on the type of

material, is an unwanted or undesired material or substance. It may consist
of the unwanted materials left over from a manufacturing process
(industrial, commercial, mining, or agricultural operations) or from
community and household activities.

The material may be discarded or accumulated, stored, or treated

physically, chemically, or biologically, prior to being discarded or recycled.
It is also used to describe something you use inefficiently or
inappropriately.

1. Biodegradable
The term biodegradable is used for those things that can be easily
decomposed by natural agents such as water, oxygen, ultraviolet rays of
the sun, acid rain, microorganisms, among others. The natural elements
such as oxygen, water, moisture, and heat facilitate the
composition; thereby, breaking the complex organic forms to simpler
units.

The decomposed matter eventually mixes or returns back to the soil;

thus, the soil is once again nourished with various nutrients and minerals.

Paper
Paper recycling pertains to the processes of reprocessing waste paper
for reuse. Waste papers are either obtained from paper mills crafts,
discarded paper materials, and waste paper material discarded after
consumer use.
Other forms like corrugated, wrapping, and packaging papers among
other types of paper are usually checked for cycling suitability before the
process. The papers are collected from the waste locations then sent to
paper recycling facilities.
Paper is one material that can be easily recycled. Recycled paper is
made from paper products that have already been used and recovered.

Kitchen Waste
These are bits of food that are leftover from cooking, such as
vegetable peelings, cheese rind, and scraps from people's plates.
Food waste is a growing area of concern with many costs to the
community in terms of waste collection, disposal, and greenhouse gases.
 When you're watching food end up in landfill, it turns into methane, a
greenhouse gas that is particularly damaging to the environment. Food
waste costs you money and also wastes the valuable water and energy
resources used to produce the food. Composting your food scraps and
garden waste will reduce the amount of organic waste that goes to landfill
and the associated release of methane, a particularly strong greenhouse
gas. You can use the compost in your garden to improve your soil and to
serve as fertilizer to plants.

Yard Cuttings
Yard waste is vegetative waste resulting from the care and
maintenance of landscape area, lawn, and garden. Yard waste includes
leaves, grass clipping , brush, garden wastes, three trunks, holiday trees,
and pruning from trees or shrubs. They can be placed in garbage bags and
wait for collection day or you will place them in a compost for them to
degrade and be used as fertilizers.

2. Non-Biodegradable
Those materials which cannot be broken down or decomposed into
the soil by natural ages or labeled as non-biodegradable. These substances
consist of plastic materials, metal scraps, aluminum cans and bottles,
hazardous chemicals etc.
These things are practically immune to the natural processes and
thus cannot be fed upon or broken down even after thousands of years.
Therefore, these waste rather than returning back, contribute to solid
waste which is very hazardous for the environment.
Plastic
Plastic is the general common term for a wide range of synthetic or
semi-synthetic materials used in a huge, and growing, range of
applications.
Everywhere you look you will find plastics. You use plastic products
to help make your life cleaner, easier, safe , and more enjoyable. You will
find plastics in the clothes you wear, the houses you live in, and the cars
you travel in. The toys you play with, the television you watch, the
computers you use, and the cds you listen to contain plastics.

Recycled plastic can be turned into all sorts of useful things, not just
new plastic bottles. The durability of recycled plastic also makes it ideal for
use in drainage pipes, scaffolding boards, and fences and it is also a cheap
material for making street furniture, signs, and even bins.
In fact, your recycling bin may be made from the contents you put
into it. Your pencil case could be made from recycled bottles too, as the
plastic flakes can be reshaped into rulers, pencil sharpeners, and other
items.

Styrofoam
Styrofoam is a plastic made from petroleum, and it is also called a
styrene monomer. Styrofoam is the brand name for polystyrene foam.
Styrofoam is an excellent insulator. This makes it ideal for hot and cold
drinking cups and picnic coolers. However, Styrofoam's petroleum base
causes problems both during its manufacture and after its disposal.
Hydrocarbons and known carcinogens are released, putting human
lives at risk. After disposal, polystyrene feels and breaks off in pieces that
can cause animals to choke or to develop potentially fatal intestinal
blockages.

Glass
It is made from liquid sand. You can make glass by heating ordinary
sand until it melts and turns into a liquid.
When molten sand cools, it doesn't turn back into the great yellow
stuff you started out with: it undergoes a complete transformation and
gains an entirely different inner structure. But it doesn't matter how much
you cool the sand, it never quite sets into solid. Instead, it becomes a kind
of frozen liquid or what materials scientists refer to as an amorphous solid.
It is like a cross between a solid and a liquid with some of the crystalline
order of a solid and some of the molecular randomness of a liquid.

Glass is such a popular material in your homes because it has all

kinds of really useful properties. Apart from being transparent, it is
inexpensive to make, easy to shape when it is molten, reasonably resistant
to heat when it is set, chemical inert and it can be recycled many times.

Cans
Can is a container for the distribution or storage of goods, composed
of tin metal. Cans are used for foods, beverages, oil, chemicals, among
others. Steel cans are made of tin plate (tin coated steel) or of tin free
steel. On some occasions, even aluminum cans are called tin cans. Cans go
through a re-melt process and turn into molten aluminum.