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THE DUSTBIN PACK

Teacher's Notes

Waste Watch

Waste Watch is a national charity established in 1987, and supported by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, business sponsors and its membership. Its aim is to be the leading cross-sectoral national organisation that educates, informs and raises awareness on waste reduction, reuse and recycling. Waste Watch's inspiration and values derive from a desire to protect the environment by ensuring the sustainable use of scarce resources. These values provide the basis of its work with community and voluntary organisations, local authorities, educational establishments, businesses and individual members of the public, all of whom share Waste Watch's desire for an improved environment and the reduction of waste.

Waste Watch provides educational projects, information, consultancy, publications and training events, campaigning and advocacy for all sectors.

The Dustbin Pack is one of a number of educational resources Waste Watch produces to support schools in delivering education for sustainable development using waste as a theme. The pack contains information on waste management and a number of worksheets and suggested activity plans linked into the National Curriculum intended to provide a range of learning experiences for pupils aged 7 -11.

Acknowledgements

Waste Watch would like to thank all those who helped in the preparation of this pack including  all the schools that responded to our evaluation questionnaire for the earlier version of the  pack. Also to thank schools in Stockport, York and Essex that have tested many of the activities  in this pack and to the Waste Watch staff that wrote and produced the pack.

Also thanks to Sarah Grace of the Recycling Consortium and Sue Duckworth of Richmond Eco Action for their support and advice on revising the pack.

Waste Watch gratefully acknowledges the support of Coca-Cola Great Britain whose generous funding support made this publication possible.

A Waste Watch publication.
The Dustbin Pack - updated 2000 by Anne Richards and Geoff Collett.

Originally written by Rob Stephenson and Harriet Blanchard.
Revised in 1993 by Sue Duckworth, updated in 1996 by Jim Fielder.

Designed and illustrated by wave.org.uk

Contents

About the pack

How to use the pack

Teachers' notes

Includes learning outcomes, curriculum links, resources needed, background information and answers for each worksheet activity.

Master copies of worksheets for each activity

1. Waste 1

2. Waste 2

3. Paper

4. Plastic

5. Organic Waste

6. Glass

7. Metals

8. Textiles

9. Packaging

10. 3 Rs - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Other resources and sources of information

Feedback and evaluation form

Posters

About the pack

This pack is designed for use with children of 7-11 years. The ten information sheets and worksheets provide easy to use activities -introducing the study of domestic waste, its make up, potential for waste reduction, reuse and recycling and the environmental impact of waste.

As education for sustainable development becomes increasing recognised as an important and integral part of the National Curriculum for England and Wales waste education can be a useful starting point for dealing with a variety of important issues relating to sustainable development. Waste management and recycling can also be used to provide useful examples of living maths, the use of language and for many key concepts in science. The subject links table indicates how the activities and worksheets in this pack can link into a number of core and non core subjects. Further details of the curriculum links and learning outcomes, additional resources, suggested extension activities and answers are given for each of the subject areas in the Teachers' Notes section.

One of the aims of the pack is to inform teachers as well as pupils about the need to reduce, reuse and recycle more of our waste and to give an insight into why waste production is of concern to us all. Background information is given in the Teachers' Notes on each of the subjects highlighted by the information sheets and worksheets to help put the activities into an environmental as well as educational context. Further information and advice can be obtained from the Waste Watch Wasteline or by visiting our web site www.wastewatch.org.uk.

Many teachers may wish to utilise pupil enthusiasm by extending the ideas presented in this pack into a longer project or into the everyday life of the school. A list of other useful publications and sources of information are included in this pack.

Revision and evaluation of the pack

This pack is the most recent update of what has become a well-established and well-known education pack that was first published in 1993. The New Dustbin Pack has been devised to build on the strengths of the earlier versions while altering the format and adding new activities. This has been done as a response to the feedback given by teachers and waste education practitioners on what was good and bad about the earlier versions of the pack.

The two main changes to the pack have been to separate out the information sheets from the activity or worksheets and to provide the worksheets on CD ROM. This is intended to make it possible for teachers to edit and adapt the worksheets as they see fit and for teachers to add in the suggested extension activities outlined in these Teachers' Notes.

Another important change is to include an evaluation and feedback form in the pack which will help us to further refine the pack and to justify the use of the resources used in producing the pack. There is an incentive to returning the evaluation forms - every six months we will be choosing at random one of the returned forms and awarding the school or organisation that sent it back a £50 book token. Please take the time to complete and return these forms once you have had a chance to use the pack in your school.

Subject and topic links

The activities in this pack have been devised by teachers to have strong links with the core subjects of the revised National Curriculum as well as geography, history, design technology, music, personal and social education.

The table over illustrates the main subject links and more details are given in the relevant part of the Activities Section. These links should not be used to preclude the use of the pack in Scotland or for teachers wishing to take a more cross curricular approach to education for sustainable development.

Format of the pack and suggested use

Each activity consists of an Information Sheet on the topic and prepared Worksheets for completion by the pupils either individually or working in groups. The pupils will need to read and interpret the information on the Information Sheets in order to complete the Worksheets and activities. These have both been provided in a format that is easy to photocopy and the worksheets are also provided on CD ROM for ease of printing or editing by you to adapt them to the ability of your pupils.

Some of the activities require additional materials to be provided or brought in from home and these too are shown in bold under "Resources" in the Teachers' Notes. Further free information on all of the topic areas is available from the Waste Watch Wasteline telephone 0870 2430136 or by visiting our web site www.wastewatch.org.uk.

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