Trash Talk

We started an ongoing discussion about consumer waste a while back, brought on by The Story of Stuff.  One of my kind guides in navigating the new-to-me world of homeschooling gave me a link to another mom's blog which has a unit on plastics. We took some information from that post and watched some videos on the Pacific Garbage Patch that we found through her post. It got me thinking that this entire topic can be expanded on ten fold. That's when my mind began to short circuit. When I see all the magnificent possibilities I have an extremely difficult time compartmentalizing the pieces. Somehow I was able to manage choosing a place to begin,  making plastic in our kitchen. Which was a fun project, though the experiment I found on the web left out a lot of information about the process, for instance how long it takes to dry (a lot longer than I imagined-several days) and what's actually happening chemically. After doing the plastic experiment I found a more detailed Youtube video from Chemistry Corner. The plastic we made will decompose in about 35 to 45 YEARS. I guess it's better than never.

In a week and a half at our first Homeschool Maker's Meet we'll be making paper and paper beads from consumer waste, we've also got a couple projects planned which will use wood pallets. I've got a pallet pintrest board with a bunch of cool projects on it. I'm so excited for these Maker's Meets!