From Household Waste To Sustainable Living

The products and materials we do not need, which are described as garbage that have fallen out of use in our homes, are called household waste. Products such as cardboard, books and pharmaceutical waste are classified as domestic waste. These wastes, which are less harmful to the environment than industrial and electronic wastes, may cause environmental pollution. Domestic wastes, which also cause visual pollution, are sent for recycling.

The increasing rate of urbanization has caused the increase in the amount of domestic wastes generated in the cities and change their composition, thus creating a problem that is difficult to control, and on the other hand, it has turned into a great economic value.

The production of non-recyclable packaging paper is one of the largest manufacturing processes in which fossil fuels are consumed globally. Cutting large amounts of trees for production (17 trees per 1 ton of paper) causes an increase in carbon emissions. In addition, paper packaging wastes have a significant place in the composition of garbage and constitute an important part of the volume problem in waste landfills. Therefore, it is important to prevent and reduce the generation of paper packaging waste.

Image belongs to the author – (Attribution CC-BY)
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Designing educational material from household waste

ABSTRACT: In our STEM activity with 13-14-year-old students, it was aimed to evaluate waste materials, create design products, learn about organelles, and develop three-dimensional thinking skills. Traditional lectures on cells and organelles are not enough to learn adequately. In our activity, which is prepared to understand both engineering design skills and molecular biology with a multi-disciplinary study of biology, students are presented with information and visuals about various organelles. Students were asked to prepare designs from domestic wastes by thinking in three dimensions of various cellular structures (endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, chloroplast, ribosome, nucleus, lysosome, Golgi apparatus, etc.). The students were excitedly prepared for this event, and they were happy to prepare completely their own material choices and original designs.

A selection of images from the project practice– The images are the author’s own –(Attribution CC-BY)
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