Teacher Preparation

Overarching learning goal: Students take responsibility for their own learning by watching three short clips on waste and landfills and completing a thinking routine which cements their understanding.

The Flipped Lesson

This lesson provides the opportunity for students to explore/build their current knowledge, attitudes and values about waste and landfills. While working independently, students are to view the videos and complete the questions on the Student Worksheet. Teachers will also gain insight from students’ responses which can be used to plan follow-up lessons from the Back to Earth unit.

This visual thinking tool can be useful in examining how and why student thinking has changed based on learning specific content information. It also helps to develop their reasoning abilities and to recognise cause and effect relationships.

Clip 1. From lunch to landfill

This clip shows the journey of waste from lunch to landfill as it moves through LA. Clip length - 01:42.

From Lunch to Landfill - https://vimeo.com/40753094

Clip 2. Importing garbage for energy is good business for Sweden

Everyone produces waste, and the Swedes are no different. It’s what they do with it that is unusual. Sweden recycles and sorts its waste so efficiently that less than 1 percent ends up in landfills. But perhaps even more interesting, and somewhat controversial, is that Sweden burns about as much household waste as it recycles, over 2 million tons, and converts this to energy. But even with this amount of domestic waste, the country’s 32 waste-to energy (WTE) incineration plants can handle even more. And when Sweden runs out of its own garbage, it offers a service to the rest of garbage-bloated Europe: importing excess waste from other countries. Clip length - 04:03.

Importing garbage for energy is good business for Sweden - https://vimeo.com/103801887

Clip 3. Landfill Harvest

Mandaue Landfill in Cebu, The Philippines: the 50 families who call this home are the bottom of their society; the lowest of the low. They scratch a living selling anything they can find by ‘harvesting’ the landfill. But material wealth is not the only kind of riches, and where there is hope and resourcefulness there is always the chance of a better life. Clip length - 04:13.

"LANDFILL HARVEST" (short documentary by Steve Ramsden) - https://youtu.be/DZq82Fvw_1I

Back to Earth - Green Bin Waste Processing

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