Abstract
Plastic pollution of sea and land is a worldwide problem that is key to the 21st century. The consequences give rise to a wide variety of biological, social and political issues. Therefore possible solutions ask for a multidisciplinary, multicultural and multifaceted approach. The use, recycling and litter of plastic is very prominent in students' daily lives and therefor relevant and easy to relate to. Furthermore, the global scale of the issue of plastic soup offers many possibilities to promote students
Copyright/Creative Commons
Materials are published under the
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Introduction: Texts or videos about plastic pollution. Relevant numbers for the below described activities can either be provided by the teacher or looked up by the students.
Activities for students:
- Try to reason how much garbage your class can reduce.
- Using numbers on the amount of plastic pollution in the past and present, try to make a prediction about the future amount of plastic pollution.
- Try to reason how much garbage you can save by buying in an unpacked store. How do their prices relate to those of normal stores?
- Categorize the different types of plastics. Investigate the recycling-processes of these plastics and the related financial and environmental costs.
- Plastic pollution can be reduced by introducing taxes on plastic packaging. How high would you set such a tax? Found these numbers.
- Role-play debate: Take on a role of the local governing body. Issues up for debate are for example taxes on plastic, governmental waste management of plastic, supermarket policies with respect for plastic, etc
- Mathematics
- Biology ✓
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Engineering
Target group
- Primary Education
- Lower Secondary Education ✓
- Upper Secondary Education
Age range
11-15
Duration
30 min.
Documents
Credits
DE
Katharina Flößer (University of Education, Freiburg) and Amy Mol (Utrecht University)
Universiteit Utrecht