LILA-Orange County 2^nd grade teacher Franck Reynaud obtained a $5,000 grant from BP A+ for Energy to launch a year-round project for the students of their campus.  As part of the project the 1^st and 2^nd grade classes went on a field trip to see first-hand what happens to our world's garbage... Franck prepared a video covering some basics about their trip to give us a snapshot of their big day!

Who: CP (Vanessa Houdoukian) and CE1 (Franck Reynaud) classes, LILA-Orange County campus and Michelle Clark, Community Relations Manager at Waste Management, who provided us the funniest tour.

When: November 2008

Where: Waste Management local facility: the Sunset transfer station in Irvine

Why: Launching of the CE1’s project: Trash or treasure: from waste to compost. This year-round project is funded by a $5,000 grant from  BP A+ for Energy. http://www.aplusforenergy.net
Our first question was: Where is our trash going? We took action and decided to go to our real local site.

Other facts: Transportation to the site was paid from the grant money.  The students learned about the 3 Rs: reducing, recycling and reusing.  The smell of the site was unique.  Michelle Clark gave us an amazing presentation, showed us the huge recycling piles, the arrival of the trash trucks, and the big cubes of plastic and paper that are sold to the recycling companies.  Each student got a chance to go inside the trash trucks ($250,000 each) and honk the super loud horn.  I did it myself!  We realize that the amount of trash we are making is incredibly high.  We can do our part by recycling and reducing our waste.

Next step of the project: reducing lunch waste at school!!!!