Next Generation of Recycling

Posted by: Annie
Written by: Truman

This week, our group worked on refining and soothing out our problem. We started with plastic, a broader problem, knowing we were going to have to dig deeper. We finally decided on focusing in on recycling. We then thought about why recycling is a problem and realized it was still too broad. Our group saw that to really make an empowering problem, we needed to find a issue affecting a community or group. After an extensive amount of research, we found that this generation of children are uninterested in recycling. Therefore, our problem that we will strive to solve is: children’s lack of interest recycling.
We have been trying to contact people over the weekend but it has been hard because most company and people don’t answer emails and calls to “children with strange questions.” We did manage to get one phone call with the Allen Company, who is a recycling company that has a factuality located in Santa Monica and other locations. During our call we told them about us and the science project and what we hope to accomplish. Then we asked them questions. The most important one that we asked was, “Do you feel that children are interested in recycling?” They talked about how usually children don’t seek out recycling centers like them and generally not involved with recycling. This is important information because it shows that even the people the work in “the field” of recycling think that children aren't as involved.
Our research shows that our problem is true and reliable. First, children are the biggest danger to recycling according to recent polls from the ISRI, showing that 18-34 are most likely to be less “environmental.” You’re probably thinking, “What? Why would children be the focus if young adults are interested the least in recycling?” The answer is, children are the most important to fixing recycling because they are the future generation of adults. The young adults or children may be educated in recycling, but they have been shown to be less interested to recycle. Recently, the rates in California for recycling have fallen below 80% for the first time since 2008! Hudson interviewed his dad who as a kid did not recycle at all then when he got to be in his late thirties he started to. He started to because he learned of how important it is to our planet's health.
One of the reasons for this shortage in recycling is because many recycling centers in California have gone bankrupt. The is due to the exchange rate for recycling bottles has gone down in the last couple years.
After more additional research, we believe that because children aren't interested recycling causes them to also not retain the education taught on recycling. We found that more than 3.5 million additional containers of recycled material are put in landfills every day. This is because people are less educated in what can and can’t be recycled. Another form of data proving this is that
Our problem is an important issue because if adults of tomorrow (children right now) are uninterested in recycling today, then there is little hope of solving recycling in the future...