The science of scrap

One person’s scrap may or may not be another person’s treasure, but these days it can be the launching pad to a great career in science, match or technology.

In 2012, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI), Washington, D.C., began a three-year collaboration with JASON Learning, a joint effort of the National Geographic Society and Sea Research Foundation, to develop a primary and secondary school curricula about recycling. This partnership presents ISRI (and the recycling industry) with a unique opportunity to not only spread the recycling message to our youth but also to inspire America’s students to think about careers in the scrap and recycling business and give them the scientific and technical background that such jobs require.
 

Partnering on a goal

The idea for the partnership started after ISRI President Robin K. Wiener attended a talk in 2011 by Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who discovered the shipwreck of the RMS Titanic in 1985. Ballard founded The JASON Project (which became JASON Learning) in 1989 to create engaging student curricula and teaching resources focused on science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, education. Each year, JASON reaches more than 2 million students and general audiences of more than 6 million people through content distributed by partner organizations, such as National Geographic, museums, aquariums and government agencies. JASON programs are used in every U.S. state and internationally in more than 150 countries.

“America in general, and our industry in particular, needs more workers trained in science, technology, engineering and math,” Wiener says. “This partnership will show students how a career in science, technology or engineering can be put to use in the most practical way to make things that people need while at the same time conserving our natural resources.”

ISRI is supporting JASON Learning’s mission of educating America’s youth in STEM through the joint development and distribution of curricula and educational tools that use scrap and recycling as a real world model. By integrating information about scrap recycling in the classroom, this initiative will help the next generation of elected officials (at the local, state and federal levels), journalists, law enforcement officers and business leaders understand and appreciate the recycling industry and the important role it plays in the global environment and economy.

“This partnership with ISRI and its 1,700 members truly brings science home to these inquisitive students as they see and understand the complexity of everyday items and learn how they can become renewed resources for our world,” says Eleanor Smalley, executive vice president and chief operating officer of JASON Learning. “The innovative collaboration of JASON and ISRI will provide a prominent platform to raise awareness of the need for effective STEM education for our students to inspire them to be our society’s future leaders.”
 

Getting down to work

After the partnership commenced in 2012, ISRI created a member task force to work with JASON to develop the curricula and educational tools. The task force, led by ISRI Communications Committee Chair Tom Knippel, vice president of commercial industrial at SA Recycling, Orange, Calif., spent considerable time working with the JASON team to bring the campaign to life. Task force members included Jim Keefe of Recycling Today, Doug Kramer of Kramer Metals, Jim Levine of Regency Technologies, Jay Sherwood of Schupan & Sons Inc., Jerry Simms of Atlas Metal and Lois Young of Calbag Metals Co.

Together, the ISRI task force worked with JASON to develop age-appropriate, K-12 curricula that include 25 student activities (See sidebar “Education by grade,” on the right.) and commodity readings for aluminum, ferrous metal, fibers, fluids, glass, precious metals and rubber. The curricula meet National Science Education Standards for physical science, science and technology and earth science.

As a complement to the recycling curricula package, supporting educational and outreach materials also were developed to engage youth across the country through JASON’s national distribution network and within the communities served by ISRI members and the recycling industry. These materials include printed and interactive ScrapMaps™ that depict the recycling process as well as the life cycle of a number of scrap commodities, including recovered paper, ferrous and nonferrous metal, electronics, tires and plastics. (ScrapMaps™ and other supporting educational materials developed by ISRI and JASON can be purchased at www.isri.org.)

To assist with local outreach, a community engagement kit was developed to promote recycling and the curricula with stakeholders. This kit, available to ISRI members, has sample letters that invite school administrators and elected officials to facility tours; sample press releases for local media outreach; age-appropriate talking points for hosting school tour groups; as well as an educational handout for students.

An important part of this collaborative effort is the interaction of the schools and students with the recycling industry at the local level. ISRI is encouraging its members to use these resources when inviting school classes to visit scrap yards and recycling facilities to see their work in action.
 

Modeling Careers

An appealing part of JASON’s approach to education is its use of profiles of scientists, engineers and other professionals in the curricula. By showing the diverse skills of professionals in the recycling industry, ISRI hopes to create career role models for today’s students to educate the next generation about the scrap recycling industry’s invaluable contributions.

This approach takes the form of the “Champions of Recycling” series, designed to provide a library of recycling industry career role models.

The Champions series features the likes of Tracey Blaszek, a high school Honor Society leader who got an engineering degree and took a standard industrial job. When she was recruited for a team that would constantly be learning new things about recycling, Blaszek says she was “sucked right in.” Today, she is compliance director at Synergy Recycling in Atlanta, part of the electronics recycling industry that has seen about $2 billion worth of business in 2001 grow to $20 billion in 2011.

The series also features Mike Biddle, a scientist who once specialized in traditional polymer research. Frustrated by the amount of plastic the modern world wastes—just 10 percent of plastic is recycled versus 90 percent of metals—he began tinkering in his garage and invented a cheap and energy-efficient plant to recycle any kind of plastic. More than 20 years after he launched MBA Polymers and grew it into a worldwide company that separates and refines plastic for reuse, Biddle is still excited about what he does.

Soliciting Feedback

In 2013, the ISRI-JASON curricula made quite an impact with teachers and students across the country. JASON reports that more than 620,000 students and teachers accessed the recycling curricula and resources online. In addition, last year they provided recycling curricula training to nearly 1,700 teachers in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Florida and New York. JASON estimates that if those teachers reach an estimated 120 students each, an additional 200,000 students would have been touched by recycling education.

Educators have offered feedback:

• “The Smash Science activity reinforces not only the properties of matter but also the lab skill of using water displacement to determine density. It covers both concepts.” – Julie L. of Virginia
• “When students use the Tires Should Retire activity, they learn about the chemical and physical characteristics of rubber. It fits nicely with Colorado’s standards related to properties of matter.” – Ron H. of Colorado
• “Density is often a difficult concept for students to understand and is often taught in isolation, more like a math concept. In the activity Mix it Up, Sort It Out, students not only gain an understanding of density with regard to floating and sinking, they also see the real-life application.” – Dee M. of Minnesota
   

Looking ahead

ISRI and JASON plan to aggressively promote the curricula in 2014 to thousands of additional educators and students. The organizations also are working together to launch a middle school pilot program using the curricula in the spring of this year. The goal of this pilot is to provide a model for ISRI members and local schools to use when considering a partnership to implement the ISRI-JASON recycling curricula. At press time, the site of the pilot had not been announced.

More information on this initiative, the ISRI-JASON curricula and related tools are available from ISRI’s website at www.isri.org/jason.

Bob Ensinger, vice president of communications and marketing for ISRI, can be contacted at bobensinger@isri.org.