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Enviro Project Ideas

It is important for younger generations to understand how humans living on Earth can have a huge impact on our environment. If youngsters are educated about what measures can be taken to reduce this impact, then hopefully they will grow to be ecologically aware adults and live a greener lifestyle than is common today. Environmental science projects can be a fascinating way for students to learn about these issues.

Biodegradable Materials
- The are more than 3,000 active landfills in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
  
  This project is suitable for elementary school students and investigates whether or not the items that end up in landfill sites are biodegradable. Students should choose a selection of items such as diapers, disposable cups, paper and bags. Students should collect several different examples of each item. Bags, for example, could include a paper, plastic, garbage and sandwich bag. The collected items should be buried outside in a long trench, with labeled markers indicating what is buried where. Leave the items buried for a minimum of three weeks, and preferably as long as six weeks. Then dig them up and examine them to determine how biodegradable they are.
Solar-Powered Cooking
- Solar power is clean energy.
  
  This project is also suitable for elementary school students and illustrates how turning to renewable energy could help conserve fossil fuels, by creating a solar powered stove. After painting the inside of a polystyrene cup with black paint, food (not meat) can be placed inside the cup, then sealed with clingfilm. Cover a piece of construction paper with tinfoil and wrap it around the cup with the tinfoil facing inwards. Place this inside another cup and bury the "oven" in the ground. The ground acts as an insulator and students will probably be surprised at how hot the "oven" gets. Solar cooking produces no smoke and no pollution, making it a very green way of cooking.
Greenhouse Effect
- This project is suitable for middle school students and investigates the greenhouse effect. Students will recreate the Earth and its atmosphere by nailing four pieces of wood together to create a square frame, placing it outside on soil with a thermometer inside it, then completely covering it with a sheet of plastic. Another thermometer is placed next to the model to represent Earth with no atmosphere. The temperatures inside and outside the model, three times a day for seven days and the results recorded. This information can then be plotted on a graph to illustrate any difference in temperatures.
E-waste Disposal
- Students will discover whether the average household dispose of e-waste responsibly.
  
  This project is suitable for high school students and addresses the issue of electronic waste being dumped into landfill rather than being recycled. Students will need to create their own questionnaires to hand out to willing subjects. They should list a range of different electronic devices and ask how many of each item the test subjects have disposed of in the last five years and how they were disposed of -- thrown in the bin, reused, recycled, stored or unsure. The collected data should be analyzed and students should work out how the average household disposes of their e-waste.

Nature