Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

20 minutes

Part A: Identify products with ARL

20 minutes

Part B: Design and administer a survey

15 minutes

Part C: Positive pressure to use ARL

5 minutes

Reflection

Teacher preparation:

In preparation for the checking and sorting waste items, students will need to observe their family's rubbish disposal at home over several days and bring in all their cleaned throwaways (i.e. all of the items or containers that get discarded both in the ordinary bins and their recycling that can be washed or cleaned). The range should include different types of packaging – bags, bottles and containers.
It would be useful to test and decide upon a survey platform prior to students creating their own survey. A digital survey tool such as Survey Monkey will enable fast and easy data collation and analysis compared to paper surveys.

Part A: Identify products with ARLs

Step 1

Begin this lesson by displaying the following images to students:

Explain to students that these images show how packaging should be disposed of. Talk through each of the labels and explain what they mean. Explain to students that this labelling system, the Australasian Recycling Label program, has been designed to improve recycling rates and therefore reduce the amount of materials going to waste and resources extracted from the environment in order to make packaging materials.

Step 2

Arrange the clean throwaway items that you and your students have collected over the week.

Students can work together to sort and analyse the products, creating two piles: one for packaging which features the ARL and one for those without it.

Step 3

What about packaging that features some sort of other recycling label?

Remind students that Planet Ark and other brands have worked hard to create an evidence-based system in the ARL to remove recycling confusion by explaining what we should do with different types of packaging.

Other labels are not as helpful in this regard. The ARL is the only trustworthy label for properly recycling packaging. It tells you what to do with each piece of packaging, which is particularly important when there are several bits to the packaging and they’re all made of different materials.

Step 4

Students can then work together to examine the materials they have sorted.

Students should take photos of these items to use as evidence in Part B and Part C.

You can use the following points to guide a discussion around your findings (these questions are also available on the Student Worksheet):

How many items have the ARL? What percentage is this?
How many items have labels other than the ARL? How do these labels compare with the ARL?
What do you think this tells us about the state of packaging in Australia at the moment?
What was most interesting or surprising about your audits? Was there anything that you thought were recyclable that actually weren’t?
What else do you notice?

Step 5

Explain to students that by 2025 Australia is aiming to have 50 per cent of packaging on supermarket shelves made from recycled content and that 100 per cent of packaging in Australia aims to be recyclable, re-usable or compostable.

Given the results of this audit, how far behind that target is current Australian packaging?

For example, out of ten packaging items that I saw, only two had labels that indicated all materials were recyclable, reusable, or compostable. That is a gap of 60 per cent for 2024.

Step 6

How do students feel about these gaps? Remember to keep a hopeful and optimistic mindset – more than a quarter of products currently on the shelves do have the ARL, although you might not see this reflected in your relatively small sample size.

Do students feel as though we’re on track to meet these targets? Or do some companies need more of an incentive – to be more actively influenced by students/consumers?

Part B: Design and administer a survey

Step 1

Watch:

Check It! Before You Chuck It (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW0n3PafnTc).

Step 2

Discuss:

Who feels confident that their family checks the label on the packaging before putting it in a bin?
Who feels confident that their family uses the bin and recycling system correctly?
Who feels confident that their family knows about the ARL?

Step 3

Explain to students that most people want to do the right thing but are unsure of what the right thing is. That’s what the ARL is trying to solve by making recycling instructions clear and easy to understand for Australians and New Zealanders who want to do the right thing by the environment.

Explain that in the next part of the activity students will have the opportunity to assess the knowledge around recycling within their community and to create a communication piece to address any gaps that exist around recycling.

Step 4

Individually or in small groups students independently create a survey to collect information about the school and broader community's rubbish disposal practices and their knowledge of the ARL.

Students should create the survey using a tool that is easy to administer, such as Survey Monkey or a tally table on paper.

Students will firstly need to discuss the types of questions to ask to be able to get the answers they need. Facilitate the class discussion to arrive at a common set of survey questions; you can use this factsheet to guide you: Survey Design and Questioning Strategies.

You could also use the following prompts to get students thinking about the questions they want to ask:

Who will you be surveying?
What do you want to know from the people you are surveying? For example, are you interested in finding out if people are using the ARL to guide their recycling or if they choose products based on their perception of recyclability of packaging? If they are just guessing, are there other labels, such as the triangle label, that makes people think a piece of packaging is recyclable? Are some types of packaging more confusing than others in terms of their recyclability?
What types of questions are best suited to finding that out?
How will you invite people to complete the survey?
How much time will you give them to complete the survey?
Remember that the survey could be adjusted according to the time, age and ability of people taking the survey (taking into account younger year levels).

Provisions for Learning Support: Encourage students to gather as much data about people’s recycling behaviours and ARL knowledge as possible. However, the survey can be as simple as two questions. Suggest using the questions in Step 2 if students are unsure.

It is recommended that students work in small mixed-ability groups. The nature of the task is open-ended, providing differentiation for a wide range of learning abilities. Mixed-ability groups encourage peer tutoring and collaboration in problem-solving. There are many solutions to this task, and negotiation is encouraged.

Step 5

Students then administer the survey. You may need to coordinate with other teachers or classes on behalf of your students.

Step 6

Once students have received the results of their surveys, it’s time to work together to analyse the data .

Invite students to review the data and discuss your findings as a class. Consider the following questions in your discussion:

What is interesting about our findings?
What is surprising?
How many people have a clear understanding about how to recycle?
What do people already know about the ARL?
What is confusing for people?
Are people enthusiastic about recycling and the 2025 target for packaging?
Does it influence their purchasing decisions?

Optional: Consider taking this survey home and administering to parents and caregivers, as they might have different views on the ARL and possess more of the consumer power in terms of purchasing recyclable packaging.

Part C: Positive pressure to use ARLs

Step 1

Consider the results of your audit once again:

Are there any companies in particular that need to catch up on making their packaging recyclable?
Are there any companies in particular that aren’t using the ARL?

Remember that these two questions are different – any packaging can use the ARL so long as it has been assessed under the ARL thresholds. There’s nothing tricky about getting the ARL on-pack. Planet Ark is interested in helping the environment and assisting companies and consumers help with that goal by recycling more.

Remind students that some companies may be using other recycling labels that may or may not actually mean the packaging is recyclable. Only the ARL is genuine proof that the packaging is properly recyclable.

Step 2

Discuss:

Why might companies not be using the ARL? A company may need to use their current packaging stock that doesn’t have the ARL yet, as it does not make sense to throw away this 'old' packaging and create more waste. Remember that just because something isn't recyclable doesn't mean it can't have feature the ARL on pack - it can still have the ARL with the bin symbol to indicate it should go into waste.
What would be most convincing for these companies to switch their packaging to be more recyclable or to have the ARL on-pack? The good news is that we’ve just gathered plenty of data on this!

Step 3

For this task students will create a communication piece demonstrating their learning and research undertaken in this lesson. This could take the form of a written letter, audio recording or film.

This piece could be:

Directed at an organisation that already features the ARL on their packaging, praising them for this decision and raising further awareness of the benefits of the featuring the ARL
Encourage an organisation to include the ARL on their packaging and consider the use of recyclable materials in their packaging.

Remind students of persuasive language forms. The objective is to get these companies considering the environment and the recyclability of their products in the manufacturing process.

A particularly convincing approach is to use data. It is likely data from the surveys students conducted have revealed that:

consumers are more likely to purchase recyclable products than disposable ones;
consumers are concerned about the environment; and
consumers are interested in recycling more.

This means that any company that services these needs of consumers are likely to experience the thing they most care about: profit. Companies can be convinced that there are benefits to their company – and if this is backed up by data – they may be more willing to consider the environment as part of their consumer strategy.

Step 4

Before beginning this task you may want to work together as a class to develop a set of criteria for students’ campaigns.

Keep a record of the criteria for students to refer to throughout the process, and use it to evaluate their efforts at the end of the lesson.

Reflection and key takeaways

Students reflect on their learning using the following format (this is also available on the Student Worksheet):

I used to think…
But now I think…

Remind students that until recently they were much like the people they just surveyed: uninformed about the ARL and what packaging is recyclable.

One of the most powerful ways we can influence change is to educate people and companies so that they are inspired and informed to change their behaviour. Without knowing where people’s blind spots are, how can we know what they need to know?

The ARL audit and community survey have given us a powerful insight into where to start influencing these changes.

Where to next?

Time for some assessment! Armed with their Advocate Packs and a wealth of knowledge and experience around recycling, material types, packaging, and the ARL, students can now start to share their understanding either by creating a sustainable news report or by pitching a marketing campaign to packaging manufacturers.

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

ARL - ARL Audit

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