Reduce, Reuse, RECYCLE!

By , 01/27/2018

On Friday we took a trip to SIMS Recycling Facility in Sunset Park. We met Sam, the Outreach Coordinator, whose job is to spread the word about the plant’s mission to students from Pre K through the college level.

While this trip is not tied to our current Social Studies unit on Culture, it is surely tied to our goal of creating good citizens who are mindful of the environment. This trip helped our students see themselves as empowered to make choices that help our earth.

We learned about the process of recycling metals and plastics….and it is fascinating! SIMS is a private facility that has a contract with NYC. They use cutting edge technology, including cameras that detect reflection of light onto certain types of plastics, and “blowers” that use air to air jets to sort plastics. The children were amazed to see that “tumblers” could break up glass into the smallest, smoothest particles, later to be reused for new glass bottles.

This trip surely made us more aware of the types of items that we can recycle that we may normally throw away. Did you know you can recycle an umbrella? You can! The high-tech machinery is able to strip the metal parts away from the fabric.

Thank you to our chaperones, who helped considerably while we were in the Recycling Center’s Activity room!