Climate Detectives Projects 2021-2022


Project topic: Climate change

Project title: Örbyskolans klimathjältar

Team: Örbyskolans klimathjältar

Örbyskolan   Stockholm   Sweden   92 Student’s age: 8-9 years old


Research question

We want to manage nature’s/school’s resources by saving on food, paper and other materials

Summary of the project
They draw climateheros.

During the pandemic, year 2 has been allowed to eat in their classrooms. We then discovered how much food was thrown away each day. We adults then began to weigh how much food was thrown away. The students in the classes knew nothing. When the spring term began, we talked to the students about how we thought a lot of food was thrown away. Now the students had to help weigh the food that was to be thrown away every day.

At the start of the semester, all students received a new eraser and a new pencil. We collected the old ones and put them in an extra box. We noticed the new pencils and sudden with names.
This has resulted in us not producing any new pencils and erasers throughout the semester. If you have lost it, remove it from the extra drawer. The extra box is not in front either, but you can ask for an extra pencil / eraser.

When it comes to paper collection, we have weighed how much we threw away at about 3 week intervals. The students have come up with the proposal to have an extra box with scrap paper that you can use to write / count when you do not need to save what you have made “scrap paper”. This has meant that we have almost saved 1 kg of paper during the period we have been actively talking about this.

Main results and Conclusions
The students had to calculate the food waste for 7 weeks.

Food waste
We have weighed the food for 7 weeks to see if we can reduce food waste. The students did not know that we weighed the food. During the period, we worked with and talked a lot about how food waste affects our climate and what we as individuals can think about.

Results
v. 2 8.4 kg
v. 3 6.2 kg
v. 4 7 kg
v. 5 6.3 kg
v. 6 4.5 kg
v. 7 5.1 kg
v. 8 4.6 kg

We have reduced our food waste by 3.8 kg!
That equates to about 9 servings of food.

Paper recycling
We have for a long period worked to reduce paper consumption at school through drawing books, scrap paper , etc. We weighed the paper recycling after 4 weeks and then talked to the students if we could reduce consumption together.
Week 2-5 3.7 kg
Week 6-10 2.9 kg

We have reduced our paper waste by 0.8 kg!

What’s Next? Actions to make a difference and help lessen the problem
Students encourage other students to save food.

Step 3
As a conclusion to our project, we have let the students think about what they can do to save on our environment. We decided that we would make posters with invitations to save that we would put up in the school canteen. The students have been allowed to draw and write their posters in pairs.

We will also make a small figure called “Environmental Hero”. He will have to live in different classrooms when you have shown us that you have done something that is good for the environment.

The students will also be able to present to other classes at the school what they have done in our “Principal’s Greeting” which is recorded every week. There, they will be able to inspire and challenge other students to reduce our consumption in school. The food staff will also weigh the food waste at the entire school for a few weeks.

Project poster:

Download project poster PDF

Projects are created by the teams and they take the full responsibility of the shared data.
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