Edible Science Lesson on Waste

Throwing something in our home’s garbage is an easy thing we do multiple times each day without thinking. For many kids, they know that once a week the garbage is collected and hauled to the curb, but where does our garbage go beyond the truck? For a fun lesson on landfills and the science behind them, create this edible landfill parfait with your homeschool family.

Ingredients
Plastic cup
Cookies
Vanilla pudding
Licorice
Fruit cereal
Rice cereal
White chocolate chips
Peanut butter chips
Mini marshmallows
Chocolate cereal
Chocolate candy
Green sprinkles
2 straws
Spoon

Instructions
1. Crumble cookies in a plastic bag. Put 1/3 of the crumbs in the bottom of the cup. The cookies are acting as the clay at the bottom of a landfill.

2. Add a thin layer of pudding. This layer is acting as a plastic liner..

3. Add into small licorice strips. These are acting as leachate collection pipes. Leachate is water that needs to be dealt with after it is contaminated by chemicals in the soil or a landfill.

4. Add a second 1/3 or the cookie crumbs. This is acting as sand and gravel to protect the pipes and plastic.

5. Add fruit cereal to represent organic waste. Add rice cereal to represent recyclable materials.

6. Add white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, mini marshmallows, and chocolate cereal. These items are acting as plastics, glass, and metals.

7. Add chocolate candy. This represents all other materials collected in a landfill.

8. Add another layer of pudding for plastic.

9. Add the remaining cookie crumbs for soil and green sprinkles for grass at the top.

10. Punch in straws to represent methane gas collectors.

11. Dig into your parfait!