Sustainability

Hurting the Environment for Maths

For the past few weeks, Year 5 and 6 students have been learning about averages. As part of this topic we were split into groups and had to make the average person in our group. We got a huge piece of paper and traced around them. The teachers had planned to use balloons for the head. Balloons are terrible for the environment so we came up with a solution. We got some newspaper and leftover fabric and figured out that we could stuff newspaper into fabric. It did exactly the same job in terms of the math because we managed to get exactly the right head circumference. In the end only 6AS used the alternative but we still saved seven balloons!

In past years, we have used plastic plates and plastic bottles for school tasks. In Grade 4 we did a math task where we collected data on how many times you landed a bottle flip with a plastic bottle. Everyone was asked to bring in a plastic bottle to flip. But most of us don’t use plastic bottles. That means that for that one math task, 120 plastic bottles were wasted. There is a simple alternative though. We could have just collected data on a different topic. Like, how far you can jump or how many times you can shoot a goal in basketball or even just favourite colours. All these options wouldn’t hurt the environment yet we’d get data to make graphs just like we would have if we used plastic bottles!

Over the years we have done many tasks with disposable plastic plates and cups. Paper cups and plates would have been much more sustainable. 

By Emily, Mysia and Xavier