Lesson 20 Shipping Trash

    • Let’s estimate volumes.

Warm-up Number Talk: Three Factors

Find the value of each expression mentally.

Activity 1 What a Waste

Problem 1

Estimate the value of each quantity.

  1. The number of cubic feet that the class recycling bin holds.

  2. The number of cubic feet that the school recycling bins hold.

Problem 2

About how many cubic feet of recyclable materials do you think your school produces in each amount of time? Explain or show your reasoning.

  1. a day

  2. a week

  3. a month

  4. a year

Problem 3

Do you think all of the recyclable materials your school produces in a year could fit in your classroom? Show or explain your reasoning.

Activity 2 Plastic Palooza

Your goal is to decide, by estimating, whether it is possible for all of the elementary schools in the country to produce enough recyclable plastic to fill the cargo containers that the United States ships each year.

  1. A standard cargo container for a ship measures 20 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 8 feet tall. What is the volume of the container?

  2. Each school makes about 40 cubic feet of recyclable plastic each day. How many days would it take for a school to fill one cargo container?

  3. In 2018 the United States exported about 210,000 cargo containers of plastic. There are about 70,000 elementary schools in the United States. How many cargo containers does each school need to fill in order to fill all of these containers?

  4. Do you think all the schools in the country produce enough plastic recyclables to fill all the cargo containers that the United States ships? Show or explain your reasoning.

Practice Problem

Problem 1

A large cargo ship can carry between 10,000 and 15,000 shipping containers. About how many cargo ships would be needed to carry the 210,000 containers of plastic the United States ships for recycling each year? Explain or show your reasoning.