Filling Up

Making your edible landfill:  Assemble the following materials: (Teacher Note: Be aware of any possible food allergies that your students might have.)

Layer 1:  Individual size pie tin or plastic bowl (representing ground water at the very bottom)

Layer 2:  Peanut butter or butterscotch pudding (to represent the compacted clay)

Layer 3:  Jelly-like fruit strips (or small circles of finger gelatin as a or taffy) two per learner. (flattened out to represent the plastic liner). Place individual string-like pieces of licorice into the landfill to represent Leachate collection pipes.

Layer 4:  Finely chopped walnuts (to represent the gravel layer)

Layer 5:  Vanilla favored wafers or honeyed crackers –(crushed to represent the sand layer)

Layer 6: Trash: 

• Hard rock-like candy or suckers (to represent glass)
• Green sprinkles or green tinted applesauce (to represent organic waste such as food or cut grass)
• White chocolate chips (to represent plastics)
• One cup of rice cereal (to represent paper and cardboard which makes up 40 percent of landfill contents.
• Little candied silver ball (to represent metals);
• Bite size black licorice (to represent tires).
  (Almost all of this layer could be recycled to save space in the landfills!)

Layer 7: Top with a layer of crushed chocolate cookies and sprinkle over with green sprinkles (to represent the top layer of soil and grass)


Punch in 2 straws to represent Methane gas collectors.