{"id":3924,"date":"2025-09-23T21:40:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T21:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/?page_id=3924"},"modified":"2025-09-29T20:34:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T20:34:40","slug":"national-geographics-the-perils-of-plastic","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.terc.edu\/adultnumeracycenter\/national-geographics-the-perils-of-plastic\/","title":{"rendered":"National Geographic’s The Perils of Plastic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cOver a lifetime, each American throws away nearly 15 tons of packaging. Much of this ends up in the oceans, and much of it is plastic. As plastic ages it breaks into pieces called \u2018nurdles\u2019 or \u2018mermaid tears.\u2019 These pieces make their way into the food chain and can sicken or kill wildlife.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

N<\/a>ational Geographic’s The Perils of Plastic webpage<\/a> <\/strong>contains a lesson in which students collect their clean recyclable trash for one week and use what they learn about how much trash they generate to estimate how much they would generate over one year or ten years. This is meant to be done as a class, but it could also be done remotely with students calculating their own or their family\u2019s impact at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This could be extended to making sense of the statistics about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch found at The Ocean Cleanup<\/strong><\/a> website. That site includes a video that explains how the statistics were arrived at using sampling and surveying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a math class, this information could be tied into lessons on proportional reasoning, area, weight, volume, and data. They could also be incorporated into lessons in other subjects such as geography and environmental sciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some ideas for sample math units\/lessons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n