When
- Lesson Activity
Enterprise Skills
- Project Management
- Creativity & Innovation
Who
- Lower Secondary (Year 7-9)
- Senior Secondary (Year 10-12)
Time
- 45+ minutes
Resources
- Projector
- Post-It notes + pens
This lesson activity helps students recognise that waste is a resource.
It is important to change our perspective on waste if we want to find solutions to the waste problem.
Why? When we start to view waste as a resource, we’ll begin to think more creatively about how it can be re-used or recycled, rather than simply throwing it into landfills.
As you can see from this video from ABC Education, one school discovered that much of the waste they produced on a daily basis was recyclable, and some of it was even worth money.
After watching the video, tackle the following questions as a class, or in small groups.
- Pose the following questions to the class:
– What is waste?
– What materials/items do we put into waste at school?
– Is waste a problem at our school? Why/Why not? - Watch the “War on Waste: Changing our Perspective on Waste” video here (1 min, 59 secs).
- Discuss the following questions with the class:
– How did the students demonstrate project management in this clip?
– How did the students use their school’s waste in a purposeful way? - Ideation: Set up the classroom for ideation by encouraging students to generate as many ideas as possible (quantity over quality) to the following prompt: “How might we use our school waste in a purposeful way?” Have students work in groups of 3-4 to generate as many ideas as possible (it may also be helpful to set a 5 minute timer too).
- Pitch: Have groups pick their best idea and pitch it back to the class in 60 seconds or less.
What in-school sustainability projects can you set for your students?
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