Our Resource. Discover the Possibilities. Environmental Education for KS2 Classroom resource for pupils who have completed the 3 stage programme © Global

Our Resource.Discover the Possibilities.Environmental Education for KS2

Classroom resource for pupils who have

completed the 3 stage programme

©Global Renewables Lancashire Operations Ltd 2013. The education service is delivered by and is provided by and

Hello everyone! My name is MRF. Do you remember me from your visit to Farington Waste Recovery Park?

Today we’re going to look at the things that you saw when you went on the walkway tour. We’ll follow the process that the waste goes through from start to finish.

Are you ready to remember what you found out when you came to visit?Let’s try an easy one first:

© Global Renewables Lancashire Operations Ltd August 2013

Farington Waste Recovery Facility

Fact: It took 3 years to build it all!


Question:Can you remember how many football pitches we could fit here?

• 10

• 20

• 30

That’s the same as 146,000m2


Well done if you remembered that fact.We have 3 sections in our facility:

•MBT – for your waste

•MRF – for your recycling

•Green Waste – for your garden waste


Question:Which one of these materials can be recycled?

• Crisp packets

• Sweet wrappers

• Newspaper Old paper can be made into new paper, which saves trees!


Things that can be Recycled!

Paper and Cardboard Glass


Things that can be Recycled!

Steel and Aluminium Plastic bottles


Some people don’t sort out their waste to be recycled – they just throw it all in their rubbish bin!

All the rubbish bins are collected by the bin lorries that come to your houses. The lorries then take the waste to . . .


Hello I’m MBT, do you remember me? My full name is Mechanical and Biological Treatment.

People and machines sort through the waste to recover useful stuff like paper and metal cans so that it can be recycled.We have lots of waste to sort through – up to 700 tonnes a day!


Inside of MBT

Can you remember how all of our different sorting machines work?Let’s start from the beginning of the process and follow the materials through to the end.


Grapples

Fact: This is where the bin lorries bring all of your waste that you threw into your bin at home


Question:How much waste can a Grapple crane pick up at a time?

• 1 tonne

• 1 gram

• 1 kilogram

That’s the same as 1,000 kilograms


That’s the same weight as 24 of you and your teacher!

Let’s see our next machine:

Now that the waste has been lifted onto the conveyor belts, the machines in MBT have to sort through it all.


Trommels

Fact: These machines are like giant sieves; cylinders with lots of holes all the way around them.


Question:How do the Trommels separate materials?:

• By colour

• By weight

• By sizeSmall things fall through the holes and big things carry on to the end of the cylinder.


Windsifter

Fact: These machines use fans to blow some materials into big green tubes so that it can be separated from the rest of the waste.


Question:Which one of these materials is most likely to be blown by the Windsifters?:

• Potato

• Plastic carrier bag

• Teddy bear

It has the lowest mass, so it easily blown by wind


Hand sort cabin

Fact: People sort the materials by hand in here.They wear protective clothing to keep themselves safe from cuts and illnesses.


Fill in the blanks:

• The handsorters recover plastic bottles, paper and cardboard so that they can be r______, turned into something new.

• Plastic bags and wrappers are also removed from the conveyor belts – they get baled up and sent to l_____ sites to be buried.

ecycled

andfill


Magnets

Fact: The yellow block is the magnet and it has a conveyor belt that spins around it.


Question:Which one of these materials is attracted to the Magnets?:

• Aluminium drink can

• Cardboard cereal box

• Steel baked bean can Steel is a magnetic metal


Eddy current separators

Fact: A spinning magnet inside these machines makes electricity.This passes easily through metals like Aluminium and Copper because they are good conductors.The electricity creates a temporary magnet inside them.


Question:What happens when you put two magnets together?:

• North and south ______ each other

• North and north or south and south _____ each other

The temporary magnet inside the Aluminium cause it to be repelled away from the spinning magnets.It can then go on to be recycled.

attract

repel


Shredder

Fact: Cuts large pieces of waste into small pieces.This waste goes to be made into compost – even babies’ nappies!


Percolators

Fact: These are the largest machines in the facility.Inside, the food waste is mixed together with warm rainwater.


Question:Which science word describes what happens when materials like salt or sugar mix with the warm water?:

• Dissolve

• Melt

• Disintegrate

Soluble materials like sugar and salt will dissolve into a solution.Insoluble materials like potatoes won’t dissolve, but they will get made into OGM compost.


Biodigesters

Fact: This is where the dissolved food comes.These two tanks each hold one million litres of the solution.Helpful bacteria break it down and turn it into methane gas, a bit like our bodies do with some of the food we eat!


Did you know that we can turn the methane gas into electricity, which can then power most of our sorting machines!

We can produce 1.8 megawatts of electricity every day – that’s enough to power 1,000 homes!


Organic Growth Medium Compost

Fact: Made from insoluble food waste and babies’ nappies.Up to 10,000 tonnes of compost can be held in here at one time.


Question:How many worms help to make our compost?:

• 1,000,000

• 1,000

• None

Green waste compost is kept separately and is made from the contents of your garden waste bins.

We use micro-organisms like bacteria to make our compost in just 6 weeks!


Control Room

Fact: The operators who work in here work 12 hour shifts.There are over 1,000 pieces of machinery that have to be looked after all of the time, so it is manned 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – even Christmas day!


All those machines, people and energy to sort out the waste. This is because some people don’t sort at home!

We know that lots of you do sort out your waste at home, so let’s take a look at what happens when you do.

MRF’s full name is Materials Recovery Facility. All of your materials that you put into your recycle bins and boxes come to his section.


Inside of MRF

Plastic bottles, Steel, Aluminium and Glass are sorted into different piles by machines and people.Paper and cardboard are baled separately.


Optical Polysorters

Fact: Sorts out plastic bottles by shining light on them to see how see through they are.


Question:Which science word means that a material is see-through?:

• Transparent

• Translucent

• Opaque


Question:Which science word means that a material is not see-through?:

• Transparent

• Translucent

• Opaque


Question:Which science word means that a material lets let shine partly through?:

• Transparent

• Translucent

• Opaque


Baler

Fact: Once the materials have been sorted out, they are baled and sent away to different factories to be recycled.


When you came to visit, did you see how much quicker, easier and cleaner it is if you sort out your recycling at home?

We can all help to save precious natural resources like trees and crude oil when we do the 3 Rubbish R words. Can you remember them?


• R_________ - use less rubbish by buying one big cereal box instead of lots of small ones.

• R_________ - use something again, filling up a bottle with more water.

• R_________ - turn something old into something new using

energy, like when plastic bottles are melted to make new ones.

educe

euse

ecycle

The 3 Rubbish R-words:


Well done, you’ve made it to the end! Did you remember everything?

Maybe you could design your own sorting machines and become engineers for the future!


Thank you for taking part. We hope your onward journey project goes well.

Why don’t you send us pictures of what you are doing in school to help the environment?Goodbye!

Write to us: The Education Team Environmental Education Centre Farington Waste Recovery Park Sustainability Way Farington Lancashire PR26 6TB

Email us: [email protected]


Documents

Our Resource. Discover the Possibilities. Environmental Education for KS2 Classroom resource for pupils who have completed the 3 stage programme © Global