01x11 - Going Green

[bunniefuu]

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ We need you

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ Come on!

♪ When I need help, and I've got a question ♪

♪ there's a place I go for inspiration ♪

♪ Gotta get to the Web, check the girls' investigation ♪

♪ What girls?

[Izzie] ♪ SciGirls!

Whoo!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ I need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ Come on!

♪ You've gotta log on, post,

♪ upload, pitch in! Yeah!

♪ Wanna get inside a world that's fascinating? ♪

♪ The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting, ♪

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ We need you!

[girls] ♪ S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] ♪ SciGirls!!

Hey Jake!

Yo, Iz. Can't talk now.Hey!

Does this have it? Come on, come on, come on!

Nope.

Jake, what are you doing,

and why do have so many packages of Mighty Munchies?

Haven't you heard?Heard what?

Inside of one container of Mighty Munchies,

there's a ticket, a golden ticket,

to the premiere of the movie

based on my favorite video game of all time!

[both] Subterranean Smackdown !

Yeah, yeah, I know.

I have to be at that premiere!

So I've bought every case of Munchies I could find.

Wow! What are you going to do with all those containers

when you're done with them?

Ah, throwin' them away.

What a waste! You can't do that!

We have to recycle them.

Maybe this one. Did I win?

Nope. Ah, this one?

Nope. Argh!

Oh, let's see.

It goes in, ah...

oh no!What?

It doesn't go in any of them!

Munchie containers are made out of a plastic you can't recycle.

Wow, I feel bad.

But not bad enough to ruin my chances to see

Subterranean Smackdown!

So I gotta go open some more.

Well, I need the SciGirls.

Great. Oh, and ask them if they have any containers

of Munchies 'cause I could really use a few more.

Jake!

Never mind.

[Izzie grunts]

SciGirls, it's me again. I need your help.

Um... hum....

Oh! These girls look like they know a thing or two about trash.

♪ ♪

[SciGirl] All this stuff could've been recycled,

but it's just like taking a big trash bag like we had

and just pouring it on our earth.

How many things are thrown in the trash

that could've been recycled?

Not compostable, not recyclable, and not reusable.

That's what's trash.

♪ ♪

[knocking]Come in.

Hi, Mr. Moch. My friends and I want to know

if we can kind of investigate the school

and see if there's anything we can do to help the environment.

Yeah, we would love to have you and your friends come in.

Mr. Moch said I would love to have your friends

help our school save money and save the environment.

Hi Peri! Welcome to my school!

I call myself an environmentalist

because I am very big on recycling.

Well, you should care about the environment

because it's where we live.

Something I noticed about the cafeteria,

there's a lot of wasted garbage.

Are these cups recyclable?

A lot of people don't know what exactly can be recycled

and what is supposed to be thrown away.

[school bell rings]

[Izzie] Lunch!

♪ ♪

[SciGirls] There's a lot of things that they can recycle.

Yeah, they could recycle those little yogurt cups.

We were investigating what kids threw away what, recycled what.

It looks like we've been

wasting a lot of stuff that could've been recycled.

We are going to go sort out the trash outside

to see what people wasted.

I think it's going to be kind of gross,

but it's worth it-- it's science.

Whoa! I guess we'll be

doin' some trash talk!

♪ ♪

Let's do the thing. Yes! Whoo!

Right here. Put the sections over there,

just dump it all over here, then move it to that mat.

I think we're going to find a lot of stuff

that should've been recycled. Oh. Whoa!

Milk cartons here, yogurt containers here,

and miscellaneous over there.

Look at this-- a perfect apple,

some carrots, a sandwich.

We should also make a compost one too.

[Izzie] Hey, a compost pile-- that's a great idea!

Ew! Okay, this is gross!

Yeah, I'm not really grossed out because of all the garbage.

I'm just kind of grossed out

because all this stuff is going to waste.

Whoa, what is that? What?

Ew, hairnet.

Is that hair?! Ew!

A hairnet-- [laughs] that is trash.

The trash sort grossed me out

because there was stuff all over my shoes and my shirt,

and there was some in my hair.

Some yogurt was in my hair.

I will do the honors.

Smash it up!

It can't be recycled without all of it gone.

You're not gonna get it... Whoa!

I liked crushing yogurt cups with a stick.

Let me do one! Let me do one!

Hey... ya!

I think the rest is mostly compost.

It was fun though because we got to see how much wasted stuff,

and then we sorted it-- compost, aluminum,

and the milk cartons and the plastic.

There's numbers under here. It has the number with it,

and it has that little triangle, recycling, around it.

One. This is a .

The lowest numbers are

probably more recyclable; I'm not positive.

Yeah, I think that's it.

Then we subsorted plastic. We made all these numbers.

Number One.

. . Another .

, you can probably see that it's the most popular.

Then we took some pictures to organize our data,

and then we did graphs.

Number had %.

Number had %. Number had %.

Number was the yogurt container,

which was the most common.

And then we researched to learn more about it.

Okay, it says, "Bag and place inside the garbage cart.

We do not accept this item in recycling programs."

The important discovery we found about number plastics

is that they are not recyclable in our county.

I think it's kind of surprising because I know it's plastic,

but I just don't get why.

They must have some reason.

It would be fun to go to a recycling plant.

And see if the way we sorted everything out

is what they do at the plant.

Since we can't recycle them with our recycling program.

So make a different idea for all this.

Whatever you use to be a container, these could be.

What do you think we could do with the yogurt lids?

Like a little picture frame or something--pop holder, coaster.

Those ones would probably be really good for a flower cup.

You know when you get the flowers at the store?

They're in that container.

Decorate them. Research different things.

What flowers grow best in what climate?

These lids could possibly be what catches the water.

So you could just use these for a lot of different things.

When we had the idea to do an experiment with the yogurt cups,

we were deciding to clean them out,

maybe decorate them a little bit for a flowerpot.

♪ ♪

We got to talk to the principal about our ideas.

We're just going over our graph of all the school lunches,

and we sorted them all out.

It was a pretty large percentage of things

that could've been recycled, probably more than half.

What did you learn?

[SciGirl] This graph shows how we sorted them up--

food in one, plastic in one, paper in one, and aluminum,

then the food, the compost, was %.

[Izzie] Hm, that graph looks like a pizza!

Why do you think that companies would use number s

when they're not even recyclable?

I have some contacts that can help you out.

We can get more in depth about all this different stuff

and why these can't be recycled.

[Izzie] Here's Mackenzie!

Hi, it's me, Mackenzie, come on inside my house.

I love to read; on my bookshelf I have a ton of books.

I love to do art; I made this mask in th grade.

And I drew this. I also have

American Girl dolls right now, and I really like them.

I love snow globes, practicing piano--

I practice a lot, and I also do the oboe.

♪ ♪

Bye!

♪ ♪

Right now, we're cleaning out all these containers

so we can get them ready for our project

so they're not so disgusting.

[doorbell rings]

[Mackenzie] I'll get it. Hi.

I'm Alexis.

[Mackenzie] Alexis is an engineer

who designs food packaging.

We're just cleaning out these yogurt containers

that we're planning to recycle.

Have you had a brainstorming session yet?

We'll probably make a flowerpot, fill it with compost.

Where did you all get all these lovely yogurt cups from?

From Peri's school.

You all got in the trash?

Yeah, we got all in the trash, literally, here's some pictures.

We just had a question about all these different numbers

at the bottom, can you tell us about that?

There are a lot of different types of plastic,

and they're used for a lot of different things.

The scientific name for a plastic is a polymer.

How many numbers of plastics are there?

There are through .

is generally not recyclable.

Do the numbers matter?

The numbers matter as far as it tells you

what type of plastic it is.

Like you discovered, number is polypropylene.

[Peri] Alexis kind of helped to explain, she said

all the different numbers have different properties,

like their melting point and all the different characteristics,

which lead into what kind of plastics they are.

If number s are not recyclable,

some of them aren't, why do they even use them?

One of the main reasons that number is used in industry

for things like yogurt cups is

because they can make the walls of it really thin,

and it'll still be durable enough to hold the product.

And the cups are lighter,

so it helps out as far as shipping goes.

Unfortunate that they use it

despite the fact that a lot of recycling centers don't take it.

How did you decide you wanted to do this?

As a chemical engineer there are

so many different things you can do.

When I was in college

I was just really attracted to the food industry.

I got really interested in the packaging.

Then as I started to learn more and more

how much you can do with it,

and you're really affecting how consumers view your product.

Thanks for answering our questions.

No problem.

♪ ♪

Right now, we're going to...

the recycling plant,

we're going to ask them some questions about our product

to see how it would sell, just some basic stuff like that.

We're just making some labels for our products.

The name could be called "Simply Eco."

I'm so excited. I know.

We're creating a flowerpot that has compostable soil in it.

So it's like a flowerpot package.

Oh my gosh, I think we're here!

[Izzie] Whoo-hoo! We're here!

Garbage galore!

We are at Randy's Recycling plantation place.

It's like an environmental/sanitation plant,

and there's tons of trucks that keep coming in.

[loud roar of the truck's engine]

We're going to be doing research here at the recycling center.

We're also going to be touring it.

Hello. My name is Ellen.

[Mackenzie] We met Ellen, and she is one of

the main people who works there.

Before we go, I've got a vest for each of you.

[Mackenzie] Wearing those hard hats and vests,

I felt like a total grown-up doing construction work.

♪ ♪

Yeah. Let's hit it! Whoo!

[Ellen] So this is where all of the recyclables come

after it's picked up at your house.

Then they have to separate the materials out

so that they can actually sell the materials.

So this is what happens with the material.

The trucks will bring it in.

They're just going to scoop up the material.

dump it in that, and the conveyor belt will bring it up.

[Mackenzie] That is so cool!

[Ellen] Do you guys want to check out the line

and see how it works? [SciGirls] Sure!

[Izzie] Wow! Look at all that garbage!

Well, I mean, recyclables!

♪ ♪

[loud clatter]

We got to throw glass against the wall.

That was really fun!

♪ ♪

We got to sort on one of them conveyor belts,

and it was a little challenging.

It was kind of hard to keep up with.

Now I see why they have spots,

one in the front, one in the back.

I could totally do that for a living.

I know, that was so fun, so fun.

What do you guys see the most in this pile?

[SciGirl] Jugs. [Ellen] So your milk containers;

number -- high density polyethylene.

This is milk cartons made into lumber.

From a distance, it looks just like regular wood, right?

It'll last for , years. You'll never have to paint it.

Your school had a lot of yogurt containers, right? Yeah.

That plastic is a number plastic.

Yeah, we have a question about that.

When you have a plastic such as and ,

there's a material that can be made from it.

This is creating a market for number plastic.

Number plastics; right now, there's not a lot of options.

That would be a really awesome thing for you guys

to try to solve and create a market.

We came up with an idea.

You could use yogurt container cups.

We're going to put soil mixed with compost,

and we were going to make a flowerpot.

Should we check out the finished compost?Yeah.

I want you to take off your gloves.

Well, this is trash?

It "was" waste.

[Peri] Why are you touching it?!

[Ellen] Now, look at this beautiful soil-- because you can totally touch it!

[Izzie] Wow, dig in SciGirls. Dig in!

Whoa! I got a huge compost plug!

We saw some compost soil. It was so rich!

It actually helps your plants grow?

[Ellen] Yeah, it's supernutrient.

It's definitely a better use than putting it into landfills.

[Mackenzie] Oh my gosh!

Right now, we're basically seeing

the dumping of the trucks,

and they're being shipped up over the hill.

I'm a little angry about how people are not really recycling.

Like, I see a ton of cardboard in there.

[Ellen] So you guys, I was thinking about your idea

about reusing yogurt containers.

That is one thing that we would like to solve as well.

You guys created something that we could help market.

[Mackenzie gasps]

Then maybe it's something that...

I'm really excited because I just really

want to get to work, like, immediately.

I really like the Seed Starter Kit idea.

We need to make one right now.

When you're ready to present your ideas,

you can come by my office.

We need a prototype. I want to see this thing in reality, okay?

I want to see it, I want samples.

Ellen wanted us to make a prototype

that was % recyclable and % ecofriendly.

Oh my gosh, you guys, look, it's our stuff!

They gave us some very nice compost soil.

So tomorrow, we're going to get to work making it.

[Izzie] And now, let's visit Allie!

Hi. I'm Allie, welcome to my house, come on in.

This is my room.

One of my favorite things to do is play basketball.

This is my dog Willie.

Hi!

Hey guys, I got all the yogurt cups and the seeds.

Right now, we're working on our prototype.

The different kind of herbs we wanted to sell

was cumin, sage, chives, and then basil.

We'll label it so they'll know if it's basil or whatever.

We'll have the soil already there,

and the seeds presprinkled on top.

They can water it and follow the directions.

We should cover this top with tinfoil and then put it on,

then they can take the tinfoil off.

Put holes at the top so it can have oxygen.

The directions will say "peel the tinfoil off."

We should probably make a label on the computer.

I think it's a good idea to make a label

because then all of them will look probably the same.

We can mass-produce it that way. How do these labels look?

Very good. Then we can decorate them

when they come out. Okay, let's print them.

Here we go-- assembly line!

I got some labels. Whoa!

If you know what kind it's going to be,

then you can write under the "Simply Eco."

In our Seed Starting Kit,

we have composted soil, seeds, and water.

♪ ♪

Put tinfoil on it so nothing will spill out.

Number is done!

When we're done, I'll decorate them.

I think Alexis is going to really like our ideas.

Hi ladies! Hi! Hi!

I see a lot of progress has been made.

When we were showing Alexis our prototype, she gave us

some tips about how the whole thing should be made.

So let's talk about some of these design considerations.

Somebody explain to me the purpose of the tinfoil.

The tinfoil is to make sure none of the dirt comes out

or the soil from spilling out when we're packaging it.

Because of the holes in the lid, right?

If you put holes in the lid,

what if the water evaporates and dries off the seed?

So maybe we should just not put any water in.

Or do you really need the holes in the lid,

because that adds an extra step.

If you water it, then not having holes in the lid

will keep the moisture in.

Our designs, we thought that they would work

until Alexis told us we have to think about the steps

and what's going to happen if we do certain things.

Another thing that will speed up your process

would be, figure out how many

of each specific seed you want to make,

and then you can preprint the labels

so that you don't have to write what it is on there each time.

Just print more labels with the directions on it

and stick those right on the back.

The name of the product, I love it!

The only thing I recommend is putting what it actually is.

[Allie] Seed Starting Kit. [Alexis] Right.

So that needs to be on here too.

And we need to get the names of the different seeds on here.

Could your label be spiced up a little bit?

When we were brainstorming,

she helped us take things into consideration

like what would people like to use? What was recyclable?

Because that would make people want to buy it.

What if there was a competitor that was the same thing as ours?

What would make us different?

And we want our label to pop out.

[Alexis] I have a friend who works at a plant store,

a place where they sell things like this.

They said they'd be willing to do a little trial for us.

So cool.

But they need by Friday.

I'm really excited that Alexis did that for us.

I mean, she obviously really cares that we're going to try

and help the environment.

It's a good opportunity, but we really need to get to work.

No more playin' around. But can we do it? [all] Yes!

Yes! It's go time!

♪ ♪

[Peri] Right now, we are revising our label,

making it a little more neater, colorful.

[Mackenzie] On Friday, we are going to be selling them

at our local garden shop.

It's really exciting!

[Peri] There's also a lot of pressure because we gotta make

of these and make them look neat, not kind of cheap!

I think it was a good idea to add directions on the label

so you know how to take care of a plant.

[Allie] We're just going to finish off the day

with as much as we can get done.

[Izzie] Here's Peri's profile.

My name is Peri, and this is my house.

This is Puffy.

This is my bunny. This is my room.

It is very pink because I like pink.

This is my soccer trophy,

basketball trophy, gymnastics, volleyball trophy.

I like a lot of athletic stuff.

This is a picture of me and my brother.

I also have a sewing machine because I like sewing.

Thank you for coming. Bye!

We're about to start selling our Seed Starter Kits.

We decided for the money that half of it will be going

to our recycling center,

and the other half will be going to Pennies for Patients,

which is for kids with leukemia or lymphoma.

♪ ♪

Would you be interested in our Simply Eco Seed Starter Kit?

No thank you.

♪ ♪

There was a lot of people,

and we were kind of bored a little bit because we're like

come on, we just want to get started, and then...

I'll take .

There you are. Thank you. Thank you.

This morning it was a little rough because

we weren't very comfortable with going up to them.

Then we kind of revised our catch phrases,

which really helped us reel them in.

Would you be interested in just looking at our Seed Starter Kit?

I would like to tell you about our Seed Starter Kit.

You guys did this yourself?

Yes. For only a dollar--they're going to a very good cause.

All you have to do is add water, the directions are on the back.

They're all made out of recycled material.

of them for $.

[woman] I'll take a cumin. [man] Why don't we get of them?

[woman] I'll take one of each. [SciGirl] Thank you.

[woman] Good luck! Thanks guys!

Hi Alexis!

Oh, I'm so proud.

Oh, I need a hug!

How's business going? Great. Pretty good.

Their project has come a long way.

It looks like it's going really well.

They're very good saleswomen.

You're a good sales, salesgirl.

I'm proud. Thank you.

Good luck with the rest of your sales for the day.

Thank you for giving us this advice. It's really helpful.

No problem!

I'm going to take chives.

I'll take a sage.

Today, we got to actually sell our product,

and it was just really fun. We did really well.

Right now, we're at the recycling association.

We're just about to go into Ellen's office

and give her our presentation.

All right girls, I'm ready. [SciGirls] Hi. [Ellen] Hi.

I'm very excited to see what you came up with.

This is our Simply Eco Seed Starting Kit.

The reason why we made this, we did a trash sort

at my school, and we found a lot of number plastics.

We thought to ourselves we could do something

instead of throwing these away.

Our ideas were to make a flowerpot.

What's in our container would be the seeds,

some water, some compost and soil.

We came up with many different prototypes.

We showed all our different prototypes

and how it kind of led up to the final prototype, which was

really good because we needed to show her where we came from.

These are our final products...

[drumroll]

Nice.

When I revealed our product, Ellen was pretty surprised

to see how put together it was.

This is a sales chart that we made on our total sales.

After hours, we made $.

Thank you for listening to our presentation. Yeah.

Do you have any questions?

Well, I have a lot of questions.

Then she gave us some tips to kind of improve it.

But it was good because we need some constructive criticism.

Were you thinking that these Seed Starter Kits

would already have the seeds planted?Yeah.

Well, what if the seed actually sprouted?

Oh!

Let's open up one of your kits.

I'm just curious what it looks like on the inside.

Ellen, she just said we don't want it to sprout.

That would be terrible.

This is really interesting.

Oh, it already started sprouting!

[Ellen laughs] Okay!

Wow! Yeah! We're like, oh no, no, no, no,

this is not supposed to happen.

If you want these to be on a shelf in a store, you probably

don't want to preplant them for the individual.

I actually know of a company that, they go through

a lot of little bags, they ended up, they're recycling them.

But we could do the same thing

what we did with the yogurt container and reuse those bags.

Some other constructive criticism was to mention

some other things on our label.

The materials that we used were postconsumer items.

I think that if they market the fact that it is

% postconsumer, they have a niche there

that a lot of products don't have.

"Postconsumer"-- that's it! I can help Jake!

Okay, do you think this is something

that can really get going and really happen?

[Ellen] Oh, absolutely!

Would we be working with you guys?

[Ellen] Yeah. [SciGirls] Okay. Cool.

I know that this is real, and it's not fake.

I'm just excited that I'm going to be

seeing my product in the stores.

So I don't know what else to say, but-- wow!

Well we're very excited to be working with you guys...

[SciGirls] Thank you.

...and creating a market for postconsumer materials.

It's going to be so exciting to see these on shelves

because it's not every day that you get to create a product

that's on store shelves.

Overall it has been a great experience,

and we've learned a lot along the way.

This is it. I can feel it!

I'm a winner! Ah!

No! Oh,

that's my last one.

Huh? Jake?

That's all the Munchie containers

I could get my hands on, and I didn't win.

Oh, sorry, Jake, but thanks to the SciGirls,

we're still going to be able to do something cool

with those containers.

Yeah? Cool enough to get me to the premiere?

Mmm... maybe.

[Izzie laughs] I cannot believe

we found a way to use all those Munchie containers.

I can't believe you got me a ticket to the premiere.

Yup. Well, I just sent them the photo,

and they said you had to be here.

I totally had to be here to see

[both] Subterranean Smackdown!

Ha-ha!So sweet!

Whoo-hoo!