Solid Waste Audit Lab
Week 1: Observations and Hypothesis
1. To begin the lab, you will need to make general observations about your personal trash or solid waste. Consider the following questions:
· How much trash do you personally generate?
· Could you estimate how much by weight?
· How long does it take you to fill up one trash can/bag?
· How many bags of trash do you fill up in a week?
· How does your trash use affect the environment?
· What are the most common items in your trash?
· Do you recycle or would you start recycling?
· How does convenience affect your behavior?
· Do you recycle correctly in relation to the services where you live?
· Do you know all the options about how you can divert trash from the land fill?
2. Next, use EBSCOhost to search the keywords waste audit, reducing solid waste, municipal solid waste, or recycling. Find an article that is applicable to your personal waste observations, then summarize and cite the article.
3. Now it is time to make a hypothesis. In the Week 3 and Week 5 assignments you will be recording your waste output and comparing it to that of your peers, your state, and the U.S. overall average. Based on your observations and article from the first two steps of the Week 1 assignment, please choose a hypothesis below for this lab:
a. I generate more waste, on average, than my peers.
b. I generate less waste, on average, than my peers.
c. I recycle more of my waste, on average, than my peers.
d. I recycle less of my waste, on average, than my peers.
e. I generate more waste, on average, than the U.S. average.
f. I generate less waste, on average, than the U.S. average.
4. Then, for your Week 1 submission, write an Introduction to your lab report that includes a summary of your observations, a summary and citation of your chosen article, statement of your hypothesis and an explanation of why you chose that hypothesis, and a prediction of your lab results. Your prediction should be stated as an “if/then” statement. For example, “If I collect my trash for 24 hours, then the weight of my trash will be less than the average of my classmates.”
5. Submit your typed Introduction, in lab report format (see template), including a Reference page for your article, to the dropbox for grading in Week 1.