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Santiago Romero- Esteban Acuña

10A

25 de May de y

Our Inconvenient truth

Abstract
Currently Bogota produces 6,300 tons of trash and only deals with 14%. We are trying to
reduce this percentage on a local level, which is why we have decided to figure out how
much trash are we producing on our social areas and how can we reduce it. We believe
that the easiest way that we could device in order to achieve a reduction, is to contact
alternative recycling companies that can come and take the trash, but a part of that we
could start a campaign and set goals for each of us to achieve in a year. The area that
we are going to take into account for this investigation is the snack bar and the Casino
places were the amount of trash is considerably high, and the waste is more astonishing
than on other places from school, also it is the where students regularly are (without
counting the classrooms off course). Firstly, we would show our approximation of the
amount of trash, then we will compare the information with the data we collected. After
that, we would provide an analysis of this information in order to get to the final step
which is to provide our different solutions, and the set of goals that have to be followed
up in order to reduce the waste Richmond produces every year.

Context
Now days, Trash is a subject that often leads to recycling and reusing certain materials,
but it can also lead to shocking statistics that show how much has trash affected the
environment on the long term. In our culture trash is something we find repulsive, which
is why we have devised different ways to get rid of it, but why? What made our culture
have a certain concept for trash? Is it all of us? Take for instance Garbage City, one of
the poorest areas of Cairo (capital of Egypt) this community is literally filled trash, and
their community had to adjust themselves into that into that situation. As a matter of a
fact, Trash shaped this community and its environment, most people in Garbage City are
un-official garbage collectors. The funny thing is that if I asked you to put your hand in
trash can you will feel disgust because you don’t know what is in there, but more
importantly is the social construction of what waste is, mixed with our irrational response
of survival by aversion. Basically, you won’t do it because society shaped you into
believing that whatever is in there is bad for you; Garbage City society on the other
hand, is used to it and therefore more interested in it, to the point they fill comfortable
with it. Even though, these cultures are different they both have the same issue, trash.
Trash is a problem worldwide, it is even displayed in our mainstream, there is an entire
movie revolving around the concept of what would happen if we didn’t recycle. If you
were wondering, yes, it is Wall-e. When I watched Wall-e for the first time, several
questions raised regarding the movie, and surprisingly none of them had to do with the
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technology itself, but rather the situation humans went through in the movie. If you
haven’t seen the movie yet well spoiler alert! Earth is abandoned after trash “takes over”
and humans’ develop a series of spaceships to leave the planet while robots clean their
mess for them. The thing that caught my attention was how despite the time and effort
the robots and Wall-e did, trash was still there; the difference was that machines
organized it, but they couldn’t get rid of it. This blew my mind back then, how long does it
take trash to disappear? What happens to Trash after a long period of time? But more
importantly, how far is our reality to that one displayed on the movie? So, me and my
partner decided to investigate about this topic, not only because of the movie I saw
years prior to the science fair, but because the moment we started to investigate we
became aware, and more importantly interested in waste. And personally, I believe it
wasn’t a waste of time. Moving on, humans produce about 2.12 billion tons of garbage
every year and according to the world counts if we were to put the waste on trucks this
would go around the world 24 times, this is due to the fact that 99% of the stuff we buy is
disposed on the first 6 months. The top three producers of trash are The United States
producing 771.604 tons of trash per day, China producing 273.368 tons of trash per day,
and finally Brazil generating about 105.82 tons of trash per day. All of this information
makes you want to prosecute and penalize these countries, the funny thing is we cannot
have a project around that because it is bigger than us. Nevertheless, what we can do,
is do it on a local level because trash is a problematic on every country around the world
and starting locally is the best way to find a solution to such a problematic. Let’s start to
analyze Colombia, for instance during 2017 it was recorded that from the 12 million tons
of trash that Colombia produces, only 17% was dealt with. Then again, we can’t pretend
to fix the entire country not even the entities that are supposed to do it can achieve this
so we have to take a closer look into this issue, we would find that on Bogota we
produce about 6,300 tons of trash and deals only with 14%. Sadly, the problem is the
way trash is being handled. For starters, El Relleno Doña Juana receives 6,307 tons of
trash daily (approximately 394 garbage trucks) and they have three different levels of
coverage for trash none of which are effective on the long term. As a matter of a fact,
Doña Juana has a constant collision with communities whom are close by and plead for
them not to expand their operation. Why? It is not only because of the putrid smell or the
pests that come from Doña Juana to their communities, it is how hazardous being
exposed to waste could be on the long term. All of that leads us to the next question,
from those tons of trash produced in the world couldn’t we send them to space? Or
maybe burn them ourselves? Well in theory this solution would be ideal but sending it to
space is EXPENSIVE and not only that keep in mind that there is still a percentage of
the rockets malfunctioning and exploding leaving literally a rubbish rain falling over us or
even worse staying on our orbit causing huge damages on our satellites. Is that chance
we are willing to take? On the other hand, let’s say we burn it, when trash is burned it
produces dioxins if you are exposed to them you may have risks of cancer, heart
problems and other health issues this without mentioning the damage this produces on
the environment. This leaves only one solution, recycling, sadly Bogota doesn’t seem
interest in recycling but rather in storing trash. There are hundreds of people that make
an effort to recycle just for the truck to put everything on the same place!? We cannot
change the way Bogota works in three months, but if we raise awareness and are
listened, we might be able to change Richmond community. It is beyond recall the
damage we have made on our planet as Al Gore said once “Future generations may
well have occasion to ask themselves, ‘What were our parents thinking? Why didn’t they
wake up when they had a chance?’ We have to hear that questions for them, now.” So,
how can we reduce the not handled trash percentage by the use of alternative ways?
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The main objectives of our research paper is to be able to identify the amount of trash
that our school community produces and to analyze in which ways is the community
handling trash. Also, this research project is with the main purpose of being able to
inform and encourage the school community to decrease the amount of trash produced.

In broad terms, the school produces a certain quantity of trash that even though it is
distributed on the proper garbage bins with the purpose of recycling, everything is
placed on the same garbage bin and all of that trash goes to Doña Juana. We decided
to have an approximation on the amount of trash and then ask for the actual information,
with this information we could set goals in order to reduce the trash in order to
consequently reduce the amount of trash on Bogota, and Doña Juana for that matter.
Therefore, the information and Data analysis, is extracted to prevent the waste produced
in our community, is directed to high schoolers because they are the ones who are more
indifferent and paradoxically produce the biggest amount of trash along with perhaps a
small minority of middle schoolers. Basically, after we´re able to pin and share the data
we will be benefiting the school community, and also having a new mindset for the way
school handles trash on a daily basis.

Results

That being said, according to the data collected by different government agencies who
state that every citizen in Bogota produces 0.28 tons of trash per year and taking to
account that we are 466 students in the Richmond community with the variable of time
(because we aren’t here the entire year, we have vacations).We have calculated that
every year Richmond produces about 97.86 tons of waste and that every student
produces about 0.21 tons per year as well. we didn't require any materials for the
investigation but regarding our methods we used two: Firstly, we used statistics from
different government agencies in order to have a general but precise look on the amount
of trash that is being produced as well as how is it being handled. Secondly, we tried to
gather the actual information asking Catalina Neuta, but she never replied, and no
meeting was actually scheduled so we had to ask for her correspondence to our
headmaster. He instead, offer to help us with the investigation by asking her himself, but
then again, she failed to answer and to hand over the information to him. Thankfully, one
the staff members of the Richmond community was able to help us measure the
garbage on a two week span on the cafeteria and the snack bar, we found that on our
school we produce 0.108 tons of trash on the snack bar per day, and 0.15 tons of
organic waste on the Casino per day. The independent variable that affected our
research were the people, for example on the cultural week there were events like the
bake sale that incremented the amount of waste produced, organic waste to be more
specific. Or, sometimes students decided not to use garbage bins at all throwing and
sometimes hiding the trash on other places. Taking that into account we had to do our
research and compare it, for that we had to stay from time to time and analyze the data.
Regrettably, when we recorded the data, we did it thinking that we had to count the 12
weeks of the year, but when we were about to plot the data in our research we realized
that we don’t go to school every day of the year so the actual data would be 19.44 tons
per year on the snack bar, and 27 tons on the cafeteria previously we thought we
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produced 61.92 tons of trash per year on those two location, but later we found out it
was 46.44 tons of trash per year on those two locations. Still pretty far from our original
prediction, but this is due to the fact that the original prediction is calculating ONLY the
number of students so it might actually be even bigger.

Graph showing the amount of trash produced by students every day, week, month and year and their total
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Analysis
Which means that on a single school year every student produces between 0.098 tons
of trash approximately, only on those two places, but even though this is a small number
take into account the fact that this is only the trash from two locations, and it is not even
counting the trash that some students place on lockers or just leave on the floor. Sadly,
our research experienced limitations with what we originally had planned, for starters
acquiring the data took longer than expected which by extension made our deadlines
closer and our ambition for the final product had to be cut short. Despite all of that, I
believe that we are on a critical level. How can we reduce the amount of trash in school
by our own means? It is imperative that we start the solution in the cafeteria because
organic waste is more hazardous than other types of garbage. This is because when it is
stored for a long period of time without oxygen it produces leachate, leachate then soaks
the surrounding ground and contaminates the ground water. Doña Juana have a
problem with leachate because apparently the site wasn’t collecting the leachate to treat
it (as it is supposed to be) but rather accumulating it, this could cause problems for
communities close to the site like Ciudad Bolivar and Usme. The main problem is that no
matter where we store the garbage we produce, we are going to run out of space
eventually, this year alone Doña Juana expanded about 2,4 kilometers. But the problem
isn’t only with Doña Juana, this place will be full on 2023 and after that a new one will
have to be open so this is not about the sites, but about the people, and how can they
learn to manage trash or to produce less. It would be important for students to get only
what they are going to eat in the cafeteria, right now students order in quantities that
they are not able to eat, and then throw it away on the garbage bins, the canary in the
coal mine was when elementary students started doing campaigns against it and it
seemed like the ones who had to set an example on the first place just ignored it.
Perhaps the problem is on the way information is exposed to students, if set information
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about food pointed out how much they need and the variety they should ingest in order
to keep healthy students wouldn’t need to take more than what they need and waste
everything else. On the other hand, we should get in contact with recycling companies
because we also produce a lot of plastic that even if it is properly distributed it ends up
on the same truck. It is like not recycling with extra steps, what I’m trying to say is, we
have to set goals to reduce the amount of trash we produce in order to reduce the
amount of trash in Bogota. Even if that seems impossible, by doing this you will generate
consciousness in students, and if this is truly an ideal place to grow what better way than
to grow with an ecological mindset.

Conclusion

Finally, it is important to have three things clear: Firstly, we have to prevent trash to
reach the garbage trucks and by extension Doña Juana, in order to reduce the 6,300
tons of trash Bogota’s producing by setting goals of reduction for the next year.
Secondly, we require information in the cafeteria in order for students to be informed
about the amount they need to eat, thus reducing the organic waste production. Lastly,
we should get in contact with recycling companies like rekoger SAS or Asosiaciones de
recicladores SA to recycle what we can, or even better reuse ourselves. Last but not
least, the whole problem we are currently having with trash eradicates in people being
miss informed or led to believe that they are doing fine when they are not. It is between
the gray areas of information false statements arise, so as a member of society it is our
responsibility to share what we know to others. Today is 2.12 billion tons of trash, and
even that is a figure we should be embarrassed of, would you rather tell the success
story on how we as a specie fixed our problem or explain how you were stubborn to the
facts all along?

Bibliography

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