This video explains our consumer-based economic system as "take, make, and waste" and compares it with a circular economy, which focuses on reuse and recycling.
This resource will get students thinking about their consumption habits and what steps must be taken to create a circular economy.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This video is a lovely introduction to the concept of a circular economy.
Simple and meaningful animation make tricky economic concepts easy for students to understand.
Additional Prerequisites
It may help younger students to locate the landfills or waste incinerators on a map in their local area to help them understand where their waste goes.
Teachers could research local e-waste collection centers or donation centers to help students take action right away and help them inform their friends and family members what to do with their devices when they don't want them anymore.
Differentiation
This resource would work well in any class that is discussing the importance of recycling or reusing, nature's use of waste, economic systems, or consumerism.
Taking cues from the examples in the video, have students brainstorm ideas for items they no longer need or often throw away and what they can do with them to give them a second life.
As an extension for action-minded students, create a classroom or school-wide initiative for keeping items out of the trash. Students could create a freecycle system, a lunchroom compost bin, a donation program, or recycling campaign.
Scientist Notes
The resource underlines the role of a circular economy in waste management and environmental sustainability. The video provides insights on how students could be inspired to create things differently to support a healthy and sustainable planet for all. This resource is advised for use.
Standards
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 2: Economics
D2.Eco.1.6-8 Explain how economic decisions affect the well-being of individuals, businesses, and society.
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.7.3-5 Explain different strategies and approaches students and others could take in working alone and together to address local, regional, and global problems, and predict possible results of their actions.
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
5-LS2-1 Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.3.2 Determine the main ideas and supporting details of a text read aloud or information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.4.3 Identify the reasons and evidence a speaker provides to support particular points.
