THE BURIED WASTE EXPERIMENT 

On May 27^th 2013 we started an experiment to see how long different kinds of waste will take to disappear. We buried in the school garden a banana peel, an apple, a paper napkin, a cigarette butt, a glass bottle, a plastic bottle, a can, a bus ticket, a plastic bag, a chewing gum wrapping. All items mentioned above are the most common kind of litter we find around our school.

We first checked our waste on 15^th June – the last school day. The apple and the banana had disappeared.

The next check up was when we started school again – on 16^th September. This time there were more changes. The paper napkin, the bus ticket, the cigarette butt and the chewing gum wrapping were totally gone. The label of the glass bottle had started to decompose. We saw a couple of worms doing their job to help the process.

We did the last check on 28^th of October before the winter cold set in together with the Polish puppet Zosia. It turned out that the plastic bag, the can, the plastic bottle and the glass bottle are unchanged. Even the label of the plastic bottle is untouched. Next we will be checking our experimental site after the winter frost is gone.