Garbage Blues

Overview

Objectives/Goals My experiment was to find out which everyday products biodegrade the most and the quickest. I was very interested in discovering which products were harmful to the environment and this led me to conduct my experiment. Methods/Materials I used eleven different household items including: a cotton rag, polyester cloth, Huggies diaper, LUVS diaper, Pampers diaper, Ziploc bag, Biobag, paper cup, newspaper, banana peel, and a lemon peel. I would weigh these items in grams before I buried them in the ground. For the next 5 months I would dig them up and record them on a 1-10 scale determining their biodegradation level. Results The results of my experiment were varied, but some of the results surprised me. The two items that never biodegraded were the polyester and Ziploc bag. All of the diapers went to a 2 but only because of the high levels of rainfall. The most surprising results were the Biobag, 8, newspaper, 9, and the cotton rag, 9, but these results might have been changed because of rain. The best items were the lemon peel and banana peel. Conclusions/Discussion My conclusion to the experiment is that certain products like diapers, plastic, and paper are extremely bad for the environment. My experiment really opened my eyes to the problems of dumping and to our huge trash problem. I would make a few changes but I had fun doing this project and learning new things.

Competition history

• CSEF 2008 Environmental Engineering · Entry J0915

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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