Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: What services do you use in your community?

20 minutes

Find Out: Waste and recycling services keep communities safe and healthy

25 minutes

Take Action: Supporting waste and recycling services

5 minutes

Reflection: How can your actions help your community?

Learning intentions

Students will:

describe how local government provides services for waste and recycling
understand why community participation is important for safely and sustainably managing battery disposal.

Success criteria

Students can:

identify ways they can contribute responsibly to community services
create simple messages that encourage safe battery disposal.

Tune In: What services do you use in your community?

Step 1

Ask your students: What services do you use in your local community?

Prompt students by asking them to think of:

places they visit with their family and friends, such as the local library, health care and leisure centres, playgrounds, parks or ovals
services that visit their neighbourhood, such as garbage, recycling and green waste collection, or street sweepers.

Step 2

Record students’ ideas on the board as part of a class brainstorm.

Step 3

Ask your students to consider:

Question	Suggested response
Who provides these services?	local government/council (explain that a local council is a part of government that represents local communities)
Who are these services for?	everyone in the community
What happens if people don’t use these services properly?	they don’t run as efficiently, making it harder for the services to meet the needs of the community.

Ask your students: Do you know the name of your local council?

Visit the website of the local council where your school is located and show students some of the services offered by the council.

Step 4

Show your students this video that explains the roles of local government and the services they provide to communities:

Economics Easily Explained: Government –(clickview.net/primary/videos/80309449/government)

After watching the video, ask your students: How do public goods and services benefit our community?

Suggested response: They help everyone in a community access things they need to be safe, stay healthy and learn.

Step 5

Emphasise that these services rely on community members' cooperation, not just government action. Explain that community members can support local community groups and services by:

volunteering their time (eg working bees at parks)
following the rules or guidelines of the service (eg returning library books on time, only putting recyclable items in the recycling, putting your bins on the curb on the designated day)
donating money or goods (eg clothes, food or books)
participating in community events (eg fundraisers, campaigns to raise awareness of a local cause or issue).

Ask your students: What do you do or what does your family do to support your local community services?

Find Out: Waste and recycling services keep communities safe and healthy

Step 1

Show your students this Battery Safety and Communities Visual Explainer and explain that an important service provided to the community by the local government is waste collection. Explain that these services ensure our waste is collected, sorted, and managed to keep communities and the environment safe and healthy.

Point out that there are different types of waste (eg general waste, recycling, green waste and e-waste), and that it is important to understand each type so that waste collection services are used responsibly.

Step 2

Highlight that waste collection services rely on the cooperation of many different community groups to work properly.

Ask your students: Who is involved in ensuring that waste collection services work properly?

Prompt students by asking them to think of people who:

use the products before they become waste (suggested response: residents, households, community members)
collect the waste (suggested response: truck drivers, waste collectors)
sort and manage the waste (suggested response: staff at waste collection centres)
manage services, including machinery, waste collection centres and administration (suggested response: mechanics, technicians, and management staff at the local council).

Step 3

Show your students this video about waste and how to manage it more responsibly:

Think Twice About Waste – (clickview.net/primary/videos/9246177/think-twice-about-waste)

After watching the video, ask your students: What is 1 step you can take at school or home to manage your waste responsibly?

Examples from the video: put the right stuff in the right bin, say no to plastic (particularly single-use plastic), choose well, buy less and make it last

Step 4

Explain that to keep people and the environment safe and healthy, it is important to put things in the right bins. For example, batteries are often put in the wrong bin, which can pose a danger to waste collection workers and the environment.

Why are batteries dangerous?

Batteries contain chemicals that can leak out when batteries are old, damaged or get too hot. These chemicals are toxic to people and animals, and can cause fires and pollute the environment. This is why you should never put batteries in a regular rubbish bin or recycling bin. Special services have been designed for the safe disposal of batteries. These services ensure that the chemicals and metals in batteries are safely handled and disposed of, keeping people and the environment safe.

Show your students this video about why batteries can’t be placed in general waste or recycling:

BTN Newsbreak: Battery Recycling –(clickview.net/primary/videos/48981087/battery-recycling)

Note: this video uses the term ‘recycling’

After watching the video, ask your students: What can you do with your flat batteries to keep people and the environment safe and healthy?

Suggested response: Take flat batteries to a battery disposal location.

Step 5

Show your students the Recycle Mate website (recyclemate.com.au). Explain that they can find locations near their school to safely dispose of batteries by typing the school’s address into the website.

Explore Recycle Mate with your students by following these steps:

Type your school’s street name into the address search bar.
Select the local council that your school is in.
Select the type of bins you have at school.
Type ‘battery’ into the search bar and select a type of battery (eg AA).
Explore the map or the list of locations in the left-hand menu.

Ask your students:

Have you been to any of these locations listed on Recycle Mate?
Do you have any old batteries at home that you can take to a battery disposal location?

Suggest that students look for the battery disposal containers next time they are at the supermarket.

Step 6

Discuss the following question as a class: Why do people choose to participate responsibly in their communities? Connect this question to what students have learnt about safely disposing of batteries to protect people and the environment.

Prompt discussion by writing the following headings on the board:

Safety and wellbeing
Caring for the environment
Being a good community member

Write students’ ideas under each heading. Ask your students: What can we start doing as a class to participate in our communities responsibly? Add students’ ideas to the board and select 1 or 2 to action this week.

Possible answers:

Safety and wellbeing: it is important that everyone feels safe in their community; it is important that people are healthy; if people feel safe and are healthy, they can participate more in their communities (eg go to school and work regularly, or volunteer more); healthy people create healthy communities
Caring for the environment: it is important that we care for our environment so it is healthy and safe to live in (for people, animals and plants); a clean and healthy environment supports healthy, sustainable communities; a clean and healthy environment means everyone can enjoy and be proud of where they live
Being a good community member: it is important that we all contribute to our community to keep services running well; when we work together as a part of a community, the community is stronger and healthier; a strong, healthy community means more people can benefit from living in it; being part of a healthy community improves our mental health and wellbeing

Take Action: Supporting waste and recycling services

Step 1

Explain that although children cannot vote, they can make positive impacts on their communities by supporting community services. They can also make a positive impact on their communities by helping keep people and the environment safe from dangerous waste, such as batteries.

Discuss as a class how batteries can cause harm when they are not disposed of correctly. Prompt students by asking: What could happen if batteries are put in the wrong bin?

Guide the discussion towards:

Batteries can cause fires in rubbish trucks or waste centres, harming workers.
Batteries can leak harmful chemicals that are dangerous to people.
These chemicals can pollute soil and water, harming plants and animals.

Explain that by disposing of batteries safely, we help protect workers, the environment, and our community.

Learning extension:

Broaden the context beyond batteries by discussing ways students can contribute to different types of community services (refer to ideas from the start of the lesson):

volunteering their time (eg working bees at parks)
following the rules or guidelines of the service (eg returning library books on time, only putting recyclable items in the recycling, putting bins on the curb on the designated day)
donating money or goods (eg clothes, food or books)
participating in community events (eg fundraisers, campaigns to raise awareness of a local cause or issue)

Step 2

Ask students to work in small groups to identify actions they can take at home or school to keep people and the environment safe from batteries. Ask students to write the actions they identify in their notebooks.

Some examples of actions are:

telling an adult about how to safely dispose of batteries
collecting used batteries at home and taking them to a safe disposal location
reminding others not to put batteries in the bin or recycling
looking for battery collection points at supermarkets or community locations.

Discuss the groups’ suggested actions and write these on the board.

Step 3

Explain that students will work in their groups to create a poster to help others learn how to stay safe around batteries and dispose of them correctly. Explain that students’ posters should include:

where batteries are found
why batteries can be dangerous (eg fires, chemicals, harm to people and animals)
why batteries should not go in the bin or recycling
how to use and dispose of batteries safely
where people can take batteries for safe disposal, and how people can use the service responsibly.

Step 4

Ask groups to share their posters with the class, explaining how the messages could help keep their local community safe and use community services responsibly.

Prompt students to consider how supporting local community services helps create safe and sustainable communities.

Reflection: How can your actions help your community?

Ask your students to reflect on how their actions can help protect people and the environment from harmful waste such as batteries. Ask each student to share 1 action they will take at home or school to safely use or dispose of batteries.

You could prompt students with:

I can keep people safe by…
I can help the environment by…

Ask your students to reflect on how their actions can help their community. Ask each student to share 1 action they will take at home or school to support their local community services.

Contributing to Battery Safety in Our Community

Go to

Summary

Learning intentions

Success criteria

Lesson Guides and Printables

Lesson Details

Skills Required

Curriculum Mapping

Resources Required

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Additional Information

Related Professional Learning

In this lesson

Contributing to Battery Safety in Our Community

Go to

Summary

Learning intentions

Success criteria

Lesson Guides and Printables

Lesson Details

Skills Required

Curriculum Mapping

Resources Required

UN Sustainable Development Goals

Additional Information

Related Professional Learning

In this lesson