(bright music) - Hello scientists.

Welcome back to Room 9, our region's largest classroom.

My name is Mrs. Stobbs, and I teach kindergarten in the Maplewood-Richmond Heights School District right here in St. Louis.

And today I'll be teaching a science lesson for kindergartners and for preschoolers, but of course learners of all ages are welcome to join us.

So let's have some fun.

Now, my friends I'm outside in my neighborhood and it is a special day today.

Do you see that truck back there?

What day is it?

It's trash day!

And if you notice my neighbors have their trash trucks out, but do you see one one trash can, or do you see two trash cans by each person's house?

I see two.

Do you know why people have two trash cans out in front of their houses?

Have you ever heard recycling before?

Have you ever heard of that word?

Yeah, recycling.

Here in our neighborhood, we have two different cans outside.

We have a trash can that we put trash in, and we have a recycling can that we put our recycling in.

And that's why we have two separate cans, because they go in separate places.

They go to separate places to be taken care of.

And today we are going to learn all about the difference between trash and recycling.

It's something that's very important and we want to help take care of our world.

We don't want to have our world covered in trash.

And so we're going to learn what we can do to keep trash out of our world, and maybe recycle and do some other things too.

So let me show you what's in my trash can, and then we'll learn a little bit more.

All right.

So now it's time to take a peek inside my trash can, and my recycling can.

Now we noticed that in my neighborhood, a lot of my neighbors have two big cans outside of their homes.

They have a trash can and a recycling can, and we want to know what is the difference between the two.

So let's take a peak.

All right, let's take a peek inside our trash can first.

Now your trash can might look a little bit different than mine.

Ooh, it's a little stinky, a little smelly in this trash can, but we can't really see what's inside.

Huh, it looks like there's a big bag full of other stuff.

And you know what?

That's what happens whenever you throw things in the trash can, you need to put it in a trash bag?

That way the the trash collectors will come and they'll pick it up.

And I know that in our trash bag we have a lot of things that just can't be recycled.

Mr. Stobbs and I try to recycle as much as we can, but not everything can be recycled.

So I know in there we have maybe some chicken bones, or we have maybe some cheese that got a little stinky and a little moldy that we didn't get a chance to eat.

So it's a lot of food things that we might throw away but we also have some other things in there too that we just can't recycle.

All right though, let's take a peek in our recycling bin next.

And your recycling bin might look different than mine.

Let's take a peek.

Huh, I don't see a bag, do you?

That's because you know what?

Plastic bags can not be recycled.

They kind of hurt the machines.

Whenever the machines are sorting through the recycling, it can break the machine.

So don't put a plastic bag in your recycling.

But if you look closely, I see paper.

There's some paper bags.

There's also just some printer paper.

I see some plastic bottles, plastic bottles.

I see some glass.

Now, some recycling companies, don't let you recycle glass.

We're lucky that we live in a neighborhood that does let you recycle glass, but talk to mom and dad to see if he can recycle glass.

And we also have cans.

There's cans in here, too.

So all these things can be recycled, which means they can be turned into something new.

And we're going to learn a little bit more about that in just a minute.

So let's go back up to our classroom and learn more about trash versus recycling.

All right, my friends we're back in our classroom, and now we want to learn even more about how to recycle or what goes in the recycle can, and what goes in the trash can.

We want to know what's the difference and why do we have them?

Well, remember scientists, whenever they ask a question they try to learn what they can through observing, which we already did.

We observed what was in the trash can and what was in the recycle can, and we noticed that there were some differences.

But then remember scientists will read a book.

And so we actually have two books that we're going to look at today.

We're going to read all of this book, because this is a storybook but it also gives us true information.

And then we're going to use this book to look at some pictures and a little bit more information to see what we can do to recycle.

But let's start with this book.

It's called "Garbage or Recycling?"

"Garbage or Recycling?"

Look, there's a question mark at the end.

Whenever you see a question mark, you're asking a question.

So they're asking garbage or recycling?

We don't know.

This book is written by Deborah Chancellor.

Remember the person that writes a book is called the?

Author!

So can you type like an author.

An author usually type stories on their computer.

The author writes the words, and then the illustrator of this book is Diane Ewen.

And the illustrator is the person who draws the pictures.

Can you draw the pictures?

Good job.

And this book was published by Crabtree Publishing Company, and they gave me permission to read this book to you.

"Garbage or Recycling?"

"Garbage or Recycling?"

A story about garbage and why it's important to recycle.

"It was a rainy weekend.

Nasir and Nadia were bored."

Can you show me a bored face?

(sighing) Yeah, have you ever felt bored before?

You know what though?

Sometimes whenever you're bored, then you come up with the very best ideas.

So it's not always bad to be bored.

Sometimes whenever you're bored and you're going, what can I do, what can I do?

You think I know what I can do, and you come up with a great idea.

And I think that's what might happen to these two kids.

"But then Nadia had a brainwave."

Oh, we were right.

She had a brainwave or an idea.

"Let's make a model out of junk."

she said.

"Should we make a robot?"

Asked Nasir.

"Great idea!"

and Nadia.

"We can enter it into the school competition."

And look, they have a flyer that says "School Recycling Competition Make a Junk Model From Recycling."

(gasping) Oh boy!

"We need to use things that can be recycled," said Nadia.

She picked a can out of the recycling bin.

Oh, I had a can in my recycling bin, too.

"We can call our model a recycling robot.

Cans made from a metal called aluminum can be recycled to make new cans or used to make parts for planes and bikes."

Oh my goodness, my friends, it just gave us some information.

So whenever you throw your can into the recycling can rather than into the trash, the recycling company can turn that can into a new can or it can even turn it into a bike or make parts for an airplane.

Wow, so your can, I have a cam right here.

This can be turned into a part for an airplane if you recycle it.

Isn't that better than just throwing it away?

Oh, I think so.

"Nasir and Nadia made a pile of things that can be recycled, and a pile of things that can't."

Look at their pile.

What do you think?

Do you see something that can be recycled?

Oh, I think I heard some of you shout it out.

"We need to sort our garbage.

Over half of the trash that ends up in a garbage can, could be recycled instead.

We can recycle paper, cardboard, glass, most metals and some kinds of plastic."

So not everything can be recycled, but a lot of stuff can.

And this book said that over half of the things that people throw away can actually be recycled.

"Look at all of this plastic," said Nasir.

"It's a shame we can't recycle it," said Nadia.

Dad came into the kitchen.

"What a mess!"

he said.

Now sometimes science can get a little messy, and sometimes moms and dads might get a little bit upset.

So you need to make sure if you're doing science that you talk to mom and dad, first.

"We need to go to the landfill and the recycling depot," said Dad.

The twins helped carry all the plastic to the car.

Plastic garbage can be harmful to wildlife.

Sadly, a lot of plastic ends up in the ocean.

We all need to use less plastic to stop this from happening.

Oh, look at this poor sea turtle.

He's caught in some plastic twine, and look at all these other things that happen sometimes.

Sometimes animals they eat plastic or they get caught in it.

So sad, so it's better to recycle it, if we can.

The twins were shocked by what they saw at the depot.

"Look at all of this waste," said Nasir.

"Can any of it be recycled?"

asked Nadia.

"Some of it can," said Dad.

Oh my goodness.

Look at all of that pile of junk.

We're going to see what we can do to make it better.

"What about the rest?"

asked Nasir.

"It will be buried at the landfill site," said Dad.

Hm, have you ever heard that word before.

landfill?

I think we might need to learn a little bit more.

And I think this book might be able to teach us more about that.

When plastic is thrown out, it takes a long time to break down into safe, natural materials.

Some plastic bottles take 500 years to break down.

So whenever you throw away a plastic bottle, it will be on the earth for 500 years.

But what about if you recycle it?

You know what?

It will be melted down and turn to a new bottle.

So then it won't just be hanging around for 500 years.

It will be used again.

The twins didn't like this idea very much.

They didn't like the idea of plastic sitting around for 500 years.

"We must recycle as much as we can," said Nadia, "And reuse what we can't recycle," said Nasir.

Ooh, reuse.

Hmm, do you know what that means?

Reuse means that you use something again.

So look, instead of throwing away that plastic bottle, he's going to fill it up with water again and use it again.

"We need to reuse things instead of throwing them away.

Don't throw out your old toys, share them with someone else instead."

How many of you have ever had had hand-me-downs before?

Maybe your big brother or big sister or big cousin or a friend that's bigger than you outgrew, maybe some toys or outgrew some clothes, and maybe they're grown-up gave all of those things to your grown-up, and now you're wearing someone else's clothes.

You're wearing clothes that someone outgrew.

(gasping) I remember that whenever I was little, that happened to me, and it was so fun to get new clothes that were new to me, but they weren't brand new.

It was just that someone didn't need them anymore.

So they gave them to me.

Or maybe you've donated clothes or toys to someone else.

Back at home, Nasir and Nadia began building their junk model.

The twins worked very hard and the day flew by in a flash.

"Look at our recycling robots!"

said Nadia.

"Wow," said Dad, "That's amazing!"

Look at that cool robot.

Looks like they used a paper plate, a paper box.

They used some paper tubes.

Oh my goodness.

Look at all those cool things that they used.

Reuse things made from glass, metal and plastic.

Reusing items, saves energy.

And it would take recyc... Let me read that again.

Reusing items saves the energy it would take to recycle them or make replacements.

So even before you put something in the recycle bin, it's better to see if you can reuse it.

Look, they're using that glass jar again.

Maybe jelly came in that, or maybe a drink or something came in that, and now they're putting flowers in it.

Or look, they're reusing maybe some items to build with.

So cool.

It says ice cream right here.

That's an ice cream container, and they're using it as another container to store their craft materials.

The twins couldn't wait to take their junk model to school.

They entered the competition and won first prize.

The recycling robot helped everyone sort out recycling from garbage.

It helps remind everyone that you can reuse and recycle instead of throw away.

The end.

So we learned that recycling can actually be a lot of fun.

You can be creative with it.

But we also heard some other words in this book that I want to write down, because I have recycle and I have trash.

We also heard the word reuse.

And remember reuse means that you just use something again.

So I'm going to write that reuse.

It starts as the same as recycle.

Hmm, that beginning re, re, that means that you do something again.

So recycle means that you're cycling it back over and over and over again, making something new again and again and again.

And reuse means that you don't turn it into something new, but you use it again and again and again.

I also heard a word called donate.

And donate means that you give something that you are not using to someone else so they can use it.

So instead of throwing away your old clothes that you don't fit in anymore, give them to someone else who might need them.

That keeps clothes out of the landfill.

Or if you have toys that you don't like to play with anymore, give them to someone else, and then they can use those toys too.

And again that keeps stuff out of our landfill.

All right, my friends, I want to read just a little bit from this book, too, because this book has more real pictures that show us the importance of recycling.

So let's look at this book.

It's called, "Now We Know About Recycling."

It's by Dr. Mike Goodsmith, and it's published by Crabtree Publishing Company again, and again, they gave me permission to read this book.

Now we're not going to read this whole book.

So instead, I'm going to look at the table of contents, and I'm going to find what I want to show you in this book.

Because remember this table of contents it gives us titles and then tells us what page to look at.

So it says, "Why recycle?"

That's something that I still want to know.

Let's go to page six for that.

Why do we need to recycle?

Oh my goodness, look at this picture.

Do you know what that is?

That's a picture of a landfill.

That's where your trash goes.

Whenever you throw trash away, it goes to a landfill, and there are landfills in the city.

There are landfills around St. Louis.

Now do you think it'd be nice to live near a landfill?

No way, it would be stinky and there'd be trash everywhere.

It could be dangerous.

So we want to try to keep as much as we can out of that landfill.

Because remember in this book they said that some things that you throw away stay around forever and ever.

They stay around for hundreds and hundreds of years, and they don't break down.

Where if you throw away maybe some bread that got moldy, some moldy bread that you just didn't get a chance to eat.

Will that get broken down pretty quickly?

It will, or maybe an animal will come around and eat it.

So if you throw away some food, things like that, that won't stay around forever and ever, and ever.

But if you throw away metal or plastic or glass that might be around forever and ever and ever.

So we don't want to throw things away because it hurts our land, but also it hurts our animals.

Remember we said in the other book that animals might eat the plastic or get caught in the plastic.

Yeah, so we want to make sure that we're taking care of the earth and taking care of animals and also plants by recycling instead of throwing things away, or by reusing things.

All right my friends, let's see, I'm going to go back to my table of contents, because I know there's something else I want to tell you about that we can add to our list besides recycle and reuse and donate.

I want to tell you about something called composting.

And I see on the table of contents it says composting right there with pages 20.

So I'm going to go to page 20.

Have you ever heard that word before, composting?

It's kind of what I just talked about with bread.

So let's look.

Composting.

Now, composting, and I'm not going to read all of these words.

I'm going to kind of take what they say, and I'm going to tell you what it says.

Now composting is whenever you take leftover food that you haven't eaten, and you put it in a bin or you add it to your garden, and it turns into soil.

Now you can't put all of your leftover food in the garden or in a compost bin, because things like meat or cheese or milk, things that have come from an animal, those get really really stinky in your compost bin.

And they sometimes start having bugs come.

You might get bugs in your compost bin.

But if you put things that come from plants like leftover carrots or left over bread, because bread comes from a plant, or crackers, or let's see maybe your apple core after you're finished eating your apple and you just have the core left, you can put that in the compost bin and then you can turn it in to really good dirt for a garden.

And that is a great way to use your leftover food scraps.

So here's a picture of a compost bin.

You can see this kid is putting a banana peel into the compost bin.

And sometimes there are worms inside a compost bin and they will turn that banana peel into good soil that you can then use for your garden.

So that's something that we can add to our chart, that you can compost instead of throwing them away.

Now, if you throw away a banana peel in the trash, it's okay, it will get broken down eventually in the trash.

But if you put it in a plastic bag, remember how I had plastic bags in my trash can, remember?

Then it's going to be harder for that to get broken down.

So it's better to put it in the compost.

So I'm going to write that, compost.

Oh my goodness, so my friends, we learned a lot about things that we can do instead of just throwing everything away in the trashcan.

And I wonder if you do some of these things at home.

Okay, I want you to show me.

All right, if you recycle at your house, can you jump up and go "I recycle!"

I recycle.

Okay, if you reuse things in your house, can you jump up and say, "I reuse, I, I reuse."

Oh, I see you, look at all of you.

If you've donated things or maybe if you've had things donated to you can you stand up and say, "Donate, donate."

Good job, Donate, donate.

All right, now, do any of you compost?

If you compost, can you wiggle like a worm?

Because worms help us compost things.

Wiggle like a worm if you compost.

Oh my goodness.

I see a lot of wiggle worms out there.

Oh my goodness.

You guys are doing your part to help keep things out of the trash.

Now I want to show you some ideas that I have and things that I do to keep stuff out of my trash.

And I want to see if you do some of these things too.

Now one thing I want to show you first, and there's actually another word that we could add to our chart.

One of the best things that you can do to keep trash out of the trash, to keep things out of the trash, is to reduce the amount of trash that you make.

So I'm going to write this.

I'm actually going to put it up here at the top, because this is one of the most important things that you can do, is just try to get less trash in your house that you don't have even have to figure out if you're going to recycle it, or reuse it, or donate it, or compost it.

So, one thing that you can do to reduce the amount of trash that you bring into your house is by reusing things.

And I have a reusable grocery bag here.

Do you guys have reusable grocery bags that you use at your house?

Now right now, during coronavirus, some grocery stores don't let you bring reusable bags into the store but you can still use them.

Maybe if you don't put them in a bag in the store but you keep it in your car, and you put things in your car whenever you get to your car.

But this is a great way to keep from using all of those plastic bags.

Because remember those plastic bags, they can't be recycled in your recycling bin.

Now grocery stores, if you've ever been to a grocery store, outside of the grocery store, sometimes inside, they have a special place where you can recycle grocery bags, but it's even better to bring your own.

So reducing the amount of trash that you make is a big thing.

And you can do it by reusing things.

Now, I want to show you something else that I reuse at my house.

Whenever Mr. Stobbs and I go to the grocery store, we sometimes get some ham or turkey for sandwiches, and it comes in a little container like this.

You know what, whenever we're done with the ham and the turkey, we wash out this container and then we reuse it.

We put other leftovers in this.

So sometimes we might put some pasta in here, or if we cut up some carrots, we might put the carrots in here.

So we're reusing this over and over and over again?

And we always just wash it out and we put it back in, put other things in there.

So that's a great way to reuse something at your house.

So if you have something like this, reuse it.

The same thing, let me show you.

I actually have two things right here.

Look at these glass jars.

The first I bought this glass jar, it had jelly inside, had some strawberry jelly.

Yum, yum, yum.

Whenever I finished the strawberry jelly, I washed out this jar, and now I keep pencils and pens and scissors in it.

And it's a really pretty way to store things.

And the same thing with this.

This had yogurt in it, and now I use it to store all of my dice that I use in my kindergarten class.

And it's a pretty way to store things.

So if you ever get jelly or something in a glass jar, you can wash it out and you can reuse it.

You can even put flowers in it if you wanted to.

Wow, that's a great way to reuse things.

Let's see about some other ways that we can reuse.

Oh, you know what, how many of you have ever gotten a present before that came in a really pretty bag.

Look at this beautiful gift bag.

I got a present in this, and you know what, you could after you're done opening your present you could just throw this away.

But then it will stay in the garbage bin and it will stay in the landfill for a long time.

But look, someone this to me once and it was still really nice.

So I'm going to keep it.

And whenever I have a friend who has a birthday, I might put their present in it, and then they could give it to someone else.

And then that person could give it to someone else over and over and over again.

So that's another way to reuse.

You can give it, it's kind of like I'm donating it, but I'm also reusing it as a gift bag.

So fun.

All right, now there are other ways that you can reuse and you can be really creative.

So if you've ever had a soda bottle before, this is a soda bottle, and you can recycle this.

This can definitely go in the recycling bin, but you can also reuse it if you would rather.

So what I did, I cut a plastic bottle in half.

Look at this.

Here's the top, and here's the bottom.

There are lots of different ways that you can reuse this plastic bottle.

One thing that you could do, if you have a garden you can put this over the plant that you're growing and it creates a little greenhouse, and keeps it nice and safe so that squirrels don't eat the plant.

You also could turn it upside down, and you could use it as a funnel.

So you could pour water in it and watch it swirl and it comes out this way.

Or you could put sand, you could scoop up sand and then the sand will go, (whooshing) fall out.

That's a way that you can reuse this.

You can reuse this to hold different things.

You know what, downstairs in our basement, we have some of these holding different nails and screws and things that we might need, little things.

So again, you can reuse these objects, and use them in different ways.

The same thing with a can.

You could fill this with different objects.

Let me put some dice in here, and you could make a musical instrument.

You can make a shaker.

(dice clattering) So fun that you could reuse this in a different way.

It's not just a can anymore, it's a musical instrument, so fun!

Now I want to show you one more thing that I reused instead of just throwing it away.

And if you've watched some of my other videos before, you may have seen this.

Look, I took a cereal box, and I turned it into a car.

I added some wheels and an axle, some axles down at the bottom, and now I have a car or a wagon that I can put things in and pull them around.

So it is so fun to build with recycled materials.

You can do so many fun things to try to keep things out of the earth.

So my friends, I gave you lots of ideas, and I would love to see you try this week to make less trash.

So maybe if most weeks your family has three bags of trash in the trash can, maybe this week, see if you can only have two bags of trash in the trash can.

And instead of throwing things in the trash, I want you to try to reduce.

I want you to try to recycle, put things in the recycling bin instead of the trash, reuse things, all of these things I showed you we can reuse and do some really cool art projects, or make something very useful for your family.

You can also donate.

So instead of throwing things in the trash, see if you can give them to someone else.

And also maybe you could start a compost bin.

Talk to your grown-up about how you could start a compost bin, because this turns trash into beautiful soil that then you can grow beautiful plants.

Oh my goodness, there is so much that we can do, little steps that we can take to make our world a better place because we don't want to throw things in the trash.

Now, a lot of times you do have to throw things in the trash and that's okay, but we want to have that be our very last option.

So this week work really hard.

Talk to your grown-up, and see what you can do to make the world a better place.

All right, I will see you next week right here on Room 9.

Bye.

(bright music) - [Narrator] "Teaching in Room 9" is made possible with support of Bank of America, Dana Brown Charitable Trust, Emerson, and viewers like you.