Eliminate Waste

Teacher Tips

Hook

• Learners will answer "the bin" or "the recycling", neither of which is a destination. The whole hook is the follow-up: "And then where?" You might keep asking until the class runs out of answers, which usually takes two steps.
• Expect a confident claim that everything in the recycling bin gets recycled. There's no need to correct it yet. Note who said it and come back to them in the debrief, when they have the evidence to correct themselves.
• If you have a minute spare, you could ask "Where was each item before it was an item?" Waste teaching almost always looks downstream only, and the lock-in at the end of this session is about the design stage, which is upstream.

ITZA Pathways

• Pathway 2 is the same idea as Session 1's bioaccumulation. Learners who did that session can name the mechanism, so you could ask them to. Making the link explicit turns two separate facts into one principle.
• The global figures are so large they stop meaning anything. The fix is arithmetic: try getting learners to turn the annual world total into a per person, per day figure. The answer lands somewhere under a kilogram each per day, which is a number a learner can picture and argue with.
• The human health section is the part of Pathway 2 that changes minds. Try asking "What does it mean that the pollution we put into the sea ends up back in us?" That closes the loop the hook opened, since "away" turns out to include ourselves.

Classroom Activity

• Each group's three actions have to meet the same three constraints: cost nothing, be realistic for the school, and affect everyone. Groups will quietly drop them and propose a new bin system or a machine. Point them back to all three, because the constraints are what force an idea that could actually happen on Monday.
• Step 1, spotting the waste, gets rushed because it feels obvious. Amounts matter as much as types. "Crisp packets" isn't an answer yet; "Roughly how many crisp packets a day?" is. Without a number, step 2 is guesswork and the pitch has nothing to stand on.
• For the vote, you could use more than one category, such as most realistic, greatest impact and most creative. The useful moment is when the most realistic plan and the highest impact plan are not the same plan, which is exactly the trade-off that real waste policy runs into.

Plenary

• Part 2 has two halves, and the second one often gets dropped. Learners will name a surprising journey and stop there. The question also asks what they will throw away differently, so it's worth asking for that part directly.
• Recycling often comes back as the comfort blanket. After forty minutes on the waste hierarchy, learners still tend to finish by promising to recycle more. You could ask "What would reducing look like instead?"
• The lock-in is from Dame Ellen MacArthur, a record-breaking sailor who founded a charity promoting the circular economy. It's the sharpest line in the course so far: waste is not an accident, it is designed in, and can be designed out. Read it twice, then ask "Who is 'we' here?" The designer, the company or the shopper is a genuinely open question, and the answer is some of each.