We travelled down to Devonport in Plymouth to the Energy from Waste Facility to link with our learning of sustainable living in geography.
We put on our hard hats and toured the facility that helps power the dockyard from its recycled
rubbish. On this tour, we learnt that over 300 lorries deliver non-recyclable waste into this facility from all over Devon and parts of Cornwall each week. We watched the process and how energy is created from the lorries tipping to the massive claw to moving tonnes at a time into the hopper ready for combustion. After viewing the control room we made our way to the furnace, which was burning the rubbish at over 1,000 degrees Celsius, we took turns to look into this chamber. Unfortunately, throughout all, the children were able to see and hear that many recyclable materials still made their way into this process however, we have all come up with ways to address this at home and in school through asking very relevant questions and speaking about the plans to improve recycling across Devon. Then part of the day involved us conducting experiments on the recyclable materials to
identify more about their properties. In lab coats we used the key vocabulary like translucent, rigid, conductor and absorb to show which material does what. These tests all linked to ways that recycled materials are sorted in recycling centres after they are collected from our homes. Overall, Mrs
Dennis, Mrs Statham and I were overwhelmed by the behaviour and questioning throughout the trip. We look forward to implementing some ideas into school in the future with additional resources and workshops available for us to access.