Lesson: Recycling & Contamination – 25 mins
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What are the benefits of recycling?
• Recycling paper and wood saves trees and forests. Yes you can plant new trees, but you can’t replace virgin rainforest or ancient woodlands once they’re lost.
• Recycling plastic means creating less new plastic, which is definitely a good thing, especially as it’s usually made from fossil fuel hydrocarbons.
• Recycling metals means there’s less need for risky, expensive and damaging mining and extraction of new metal ores.
• Recycling glass reduces the need to use new raw materials like sand – it sounds hard to believe, but supplies of some types of sand are starting to get low around the world

Lesson videos:
• Today’s focus of the lesson is one of the 3 types of waste we mentioned on the first day, recycling
• Youtube Video: How Recycling Works

• Do you know what happens to the items you put in the recycling bin?
• Have you ever heard/seen a recycling center?

What does one usually do with a tuna can, or milk jug, pizza box before placing it in the recycling bin? Do people wash them first?

• Why would it be important to wash and dry the recycling items?
• What can happen if items are not washed properly?
• The next video will discuss contamination in recycling.

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