Earth Day experiment; Harlow Parker examines beakers with floating "flushables" at the utilities booth at Earth Day Friday. Advertised "flushable" items are not actually good to flush down a toilet. Read more about the event on page A7.
Little hands were creating something new out of something old at Green River's Earth Day celebration Friday.
Children painted glue onto recycled milk cartons then decorated them as they chose. The spout of the carton was cut off leaving the bottom square to make planters. Some were brightly colored and some even with bows, made of recycled plastic snack bags.
"I'm gonna make mine kind of like a rainbow, but a handle," Corinne Fauntleroy said.
Corinne decided to make her recycled project into a bird feeder, with a handle. Corinne and her older brother Jackson Fauntleroy spent time making their creations just to their liking.
Kids interacted with various other stations in the Pavilion on Expedition Island as well, each one teaching them the importance of Earth Day.
"It's important for kids to understand why Earth Day is important; it's all about learning," Jen Holden, lead operator of the solid waste department said. "It's about learning how we affect the environment."
Holden said it is important to pass the knowledge onto today's kids, so they know pause to think about how they can do things differently.
"It's important to do our part and keep this Earth for the next generation," she said.
There were about 13 stops on the island that day.
At the city's utility station, children and adults learned what types of items dissolve in water after being flushed down the toilet. At the city's utilities booth, utilities superintendent Jason Palmer demonstrated using beakers filled with water and supposed flush-able objects at his booth.
A beaker was filled with water and a tissue, which never dissolved over the course of the day. Palmer said the tissue wouldn't even sink because of the lotion in it.
"It was in there since nine that morning and never did break down," he said.
Other beakers had baby wipes, another had "flushable" wipes, and another had toilet paper.
The only one that dissolved in the water that day was the toilet paper.
"We used beakers to show how supposed flushables don't break down," Palmer said. "The only thing to put down the toilet is toilet paper."
Education kids and adults about it is important to the city because maintenance issues. Those things have to get taken out at sometime during the cleaning process of the water. It's better for them not to be flushed at all.
"It's good to get visuals out there and look like the mad scientist sometimes," he said.
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