Lessons in environmental awareness
Getting kids engaged in environmental education – the death of the 3Rs,
and why a giant rope could be the answer.
We all know it’s good to face our inner demons, but how often do you really get the chance to look fear in the face and tackle it to the ground? Some would argue, not until you’ve faced off 100 primary school children in the name of environmental awareness. I disagree.
She told us all about this island that had beaches covered in rubbish and plastic and some of the people that went to tidy it up even got stuck there, and a drone from a boat had to take a lighter to them for a fire!
I regularly talk about beekeeping in schools and kindergarten, but waste management always seemed too vast to package into a manageable format. So when I was nabbed by my son’s teacher to come in for Science Week, I had to come up with a plan. Simple, I thought. I used to do radio interviews to explain new recycling services, and I’ve trained young people in environmental communications, how hard could a school assembly be?
Over the course of three days, I ran an assembly for KS2, individual classes on redesigning packaging for recycling, and beekeeping classes for the infants. It was exhausting! A week on, I’ve had time to reflect on which elements I would reuse, and which were only fit for the recycling bin.
Reduce, reuse, recycle – avoid the 3Rs
The first piece of advice came from my target audience. My 11-year-old has a pretty good knowledge of waste management – as a toddler, he used to build Duplo anaerobic digestion plants – and he provided my most important tip. ‘Don’t talk about the 3Rs. Everyone’s bored senseless of the 3Rs. And whatever you do, don’t use Powerpoint unless you want everyone to fall asleep.’
Dividing the room. Which side are you on?
Clearly I needed to go back to the drawing board. Actually, I’m with him on Powerpoint. The reason I like talking about bees is that I know enough to field any question and (ahem) wing it; surely I can do the same with waste? Powerpoint in the bin, I switched to insider information – things even your parents won’t know about recycling.
Successful awareness-raising in schools
So here are my ultimate hacks to being a school speaker whizz-kid:
- Props. The ultimate high point was using a giant tow-rope to split the hall in half and asking the children (and teachers) questions. For example, what % of the waste associated with a product is packaging? If they guessed less than 50%, they stood on one side; over 50%, they climbed over to the other side. This created a lot of discussion and huge cheers when they got the answer right. I asked 3 questions, which acted as a springboard to:
- why reduction and reuse are always the first option;
- properties of different materials;
- markets for recycled materials;
- waste exports;
- labelling; and,
- getting recycling right
They told me about the fact you and your friends have found ‘a dead body, a fake leg and £50000 in cash. Then they said there was a tug of war rope and you asked if the paper or the glass was more recyclable.
- Gruesome tales. Thank you to all the brave souls who helped with this question, we salute you. My friends in recycling provided a range of grizzly things found in collections and at sites, which created extreme excitement.
- Real-life drama. The challenges and discoveries thrown up by the expedition to Henderson Island – the world’s most plastic-polluted beach – had everyone talking. The kids commented on how such a remote location shows that plastic can travel, and jostled to tell me their facts about how long plastic takes to break down.
Destination recycling bin
When it came to the classes, we talked about Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and analysed packaging to see if we could come up with better designs. The children were hugely engaged in this, but on a 30-minute timescale, it was difficult to give them enough detail to get the most out of the session. Without enough time to really go into this, I’d dispose of it with the recycling.
Top tip to reuse
My top, top tip is simple – make everything relatable. Let the children speak. Kids are capable of taking in complex information (of course they are!), we just need to package it in the right way. I was surprised at how much we covered in a short space of time. But saying that, there was a whole heap of faffing around! And the more engaged they are, the more they’ll want to interact, and the longer it will take.
Putting my son to bed, he’s been telling me that ‘at a rubbish dump, no, a landfill site, there were loads of seagulls but now they’ve got a hut and there’s birds of prey that keep the seagulls away.’ He was very enthusiastic about it!
