Food Project
Materials, Trash, and Recycling
Reflection
How does the chemical composition and structure of a substance determine its properties with regard to its use, capacity for reuse, and capacity for recycling?
The structure is going to determine not only use the first time but the entire lifecycle of the material. Obviously over the lifespan of a material many different things are going to happen to it and quite possibly change the structure. You have to account for things like heat, moisture, and climate when choosing materials because if what you are using is intended to be reused you have to think about if it is still going to be a usable material. If you are using a material such as paper you have to account for the fact that its bonds are fairly weak and is likely will not return as was sent out. On the other hand if you have something such as aluminum or steel that has strong metallic bonds that are most likely going to hold and stay intact. Plastics being polymers are fairly malleable so that's why they are so versatile. Their properties allow them to be molded into just about anything for almost any use.
How do the choices we make as consumers (purchasing, use, reuse, recycling, and discarding of materials) impact our local community and environment, and the global community and environment?
There are the obvious things that are affected by our use like straws in our ocean or just regular trash on the side of the road but there is a lot more than most of us realize. Many of us think that recycling is so helpful and would fix many of our problems but I've learned that it might be even pushing us in the opposite direction. For most of us recycling means just putting our things that we don’t want in a bin putting it on the sidewalk and then it’s out of our lives forever. Many people don’t think about the process that our waste goes through after its out of our hands. All of the energy and resources that it takes to transfer and convert the materials into actual reusable material. Instead of just recycling our waste we should be more conscious about what we buy in the first place. Cutting down on plastic products or reusing the ones that that can be reused I think is a better plan from the start. There are much more sustainable and better resources that we can use. If we could all work together and try to switch out of our ways we could most likely make a big impact on the Earth if we aren’t too late.
What else did you learn through this project?
I think one of the biggest things I learned in this project is how important planning is. We kind of just jumped right in with an idea and problem solved as we went along. If we would have made a clear plan I feel like our project would have come out better and we wouldn’t have had such a time crunch. Although it was a challenge going in without a solid plan, I think that having to troubleshoot and work with what we had was a good lesson and experience because sometimes that's just what you have to do. A skill that will be very beneficial is how to use the laser cutter. We used it to cut out our whole box and It is a nice skill to have for future projects.
The structure is going to determine not only use the first time but the entire lifecycle of the material. Obviously over the lifespan of a material many different things are going to happen to it and quite possibly change the structure. You have to account for things like heat, moisture, and climate when choosing materials because if what you are using is intended to be reused you have to think about if it is still going to be a usable material. If you are using a material such as paper you have to account for the fact that its bonds are fairly weak and is likely will not return as was sent out. On the other hand if you have something such as aluminum or steel that has strong metallic bonds that are most likely going to hold and stay intact. Plastics being polymers are fairly malleable so that's why they are so versatile. Their properties allow them to be molded into just about anything for almost any use.
How do the choices we make as consumers (purchasing, use, reuse, recycling, and discarding of materials) impact our local community and environment, and the global community and environment?
There are the obvious things that are affected by our use like straws in our ocean or just regular trash on the side of the road but there is a lot more than most of us realize. Many of us think that recycling is so helpful and would fix many of our problems but I've learned that it might be even pushing us in the opposite direction. For most of us recycling means just putting our things that we don’t want in a bin putting it on the sidewalk and then it’s out of our lives forever. Many people don’t think about the process that our waste goes through after its out of our hands. All of the energy and resources that it takes to transfer and convert the materials into actual reusable material. Instead of just recycling our waste we should be more conscious about what we buy in the first place. Cutting down on plastic products or reusing the ones that that can be reused I think is a better plan from the start. There are much more sustainable and better resources that we can use. If we could all work together and try to switch out of our ways we could most likely make a big impact on the Earth if we aren’t too late.
What else did you learn through this project?
I think one of the biggest things I learned in this project is how important planning is. We kind of just jumped right in with an idea and problem solved as we went along. If we would have made a clear plan I feel like our project would have come out better and we wouldn’t have had such a time crunch. Although it was a challenge going in without a solid plan, I think that having to troubleshoot and work with what we had was a good lesson and experience because sometimes that's just what you have to do. A skill that will be very beneficial is how to use the laser cutter. We used it to cut out our whole box and It is a nice skill to have for future projects.