Clean Up Australia Day

Yesterday was Cleanup Australia Day, not a day you really associate with science. But you can use science skills to make cleaning up more interesting for your kids. Plus it adds to the richness and understanding of the day – it gives you a great way to talk about why we should clean up.

Mapping – draw a picture of the area you’re cleaning and when you pick something up mark it. For older kids you could mark what it is too. Then discuss if there are any ‘hot spots’ and why they might have lots of rubbish there. Remember rubbish can be there directly or indirectly – maybe behind the bush is a place lots of kids sit and drop their cans, or maybe the wind blows all the chip packets into the yard.
Sampling – use a hoop or tie a rope into a loop and put it down at random, then count everything inside it. This generally works best if there are lots of whatever you are counting – one can would be pretty boring, but 15 lolly wrappers could be interesting. Compare different areas. See if you can use your samples to guess how much rubbish there is in the whole area.
Measuring – how much do you have? There are lots of ways to measure it, you can count bags and have a discussion about whether they are the same size, hang bags on either end of a coathanger for a simple balance scale, or even use bathroom scales to weigh the bags. Older kids can even draw simple picture graphs, maybe there are 3 bags from the path, 4 bags from the park and 1 bag from your yard.
Sort it – How many groups can you make? Will you put all the food rubbish together, or all the plastic rubbish? You could even sort by size or by age. Recyclable vs non-reclyclable. There are lots of ways to sort what you find and they all tell different stories. There is the story of what is done in that area to cause the rubbish. The story of how it’s made, the story of what can happen to it next.

So grab some plastic bags and get out there!