The Story of Pencils Lesson Plan: Activity 4 - What are renewable resources?

A natural resource that can be used to benefit people and can then be replaced for other people to enjoy is called a renewable resource.

A resource that is in limited supply and cannot be replaced once it has been extracted and used is called a non-renewable resource.

The difference between the two kinds of natural resources has a lot to do with where they're from!

For example, your shirt and jeans are probably made from cotton -- which comes from a plant. Farmers harvest the cotton crop every year, but the plants grow back and produce more cotton. Cotton, like Incense-cedarⁱ trees and all growing plants and trees are renewable resources! Young saplings grown in nurseries can be replanted to grow a new forest as well as a forest can grow from natural regeneration of the seeds to new trees.

Incense-cedar trees grow in the forests of California and Oregon along with other species of trees. These forests are managed on a sustained-yield basis to make sure that the trees are not cut down at a rate faster than new ones are growing so that there will be a stable long term supply.

Non-renewable resources are things that are taken from the Earth, such as petroleum, coal and metals. These resources were created many millions of years ago, when the Earth was forming. Once they are taken out of the ground, they are not replaced. Since there is only so much oil, and the earth cannot replace the oil that is pumped out, we will eventually run out of this non-renewable resource.

Some non-renewable resources are recyclable in that they can be recovered from their prior use to be used again. A good example of this would be aluminum from aluminim cans, old cars or other products. Many types of plastic (made from petrleum oil)are also recyclable. Today more and more products are being produced from recycled raw materials recovered from the old used things. Even old computers now get broken down into parts and many parts are recycled.

Can you think of a way even old, used short pencils might get recycled? Here's one pencil recycling idea we found. You can visit this page and share your own ideas or you can participate in your own pencil recycling projet using The Story of Pencils Lesson Plan: Activity 6.