As our first civic action, we surveyed 300 Silver Creek students to see how much people knew about composting, rather or not they were willing to learn more, and if they would use a composting bin if one was put in the school. We gave them three options to circle for each question: yes, no, and kind of. We also added facts about composting to the top of our survey to establish the need for composting bins at our school. Our final survey ended up looking like this:
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Quick Facts About Composting:
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$85 million is spent per year sending more than 50% of compostable waste to our landfills.
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The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 24% of our waste is organic material that can be composted.
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The average American throws away 1.3 pounds of food scraps every day.
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The effect of widespread composting on the ozone layer and greenhouse gas levels would be equivalent to removing 7.8 million passenger cars from the roads.
Do you know how composting works? Yes Kind Of No
Would you be open to learning more about it? Yes Kind Of No
Would you use a composting bin at school? Yes Kind Of No
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We surveyed students over the course of two days (before administration prohibited us from doing so), making sure to survey each person only one time and explaining to people the basic system of composting before they took the survey. After we collected all the completed surveys, we used tally marks to keep track of the responses and counted the number of surveys multiple times to ensure accuracy. Here are our results as percentages:
1.) Do you know how composting works? 62.7% said yes 34% said kind of. 3.3% said no
2.) Would you be open to learning more about composting? 46.3% said yes. 32.7% said kind of 21% said no/already know about it
3.) Would you use a composting bin at school? 71.3% said yes. 18.7% said kind of 10% said no/don’t eat at school
Even though we didn’t have options that said “already know about it” and “don’t eat at school”, some people wrote notes in the margins of our surveys to explain why they chose a certain answer or told us in person when they were completing the survey. We decided to include these in our final results and grouped them into existing categories. Here are our results as pie charts so that you can more easily visualize our results:
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As you can see, the majority of students would use a composting bin at school if one was available. This could reduce the waste our school puts out by a significant amount and help to protect our local environment. During this civic action, we learned how important it is to involve people in the matters of their local government and hear their opinions before making changes.
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