WRAP the Waste Resources Action Programme
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)
Resource Pack for Secondary Schools
Acknowledgements
Collation and authoring of the teaching materials[1]:
Jo Gwillim and Ann MacGarry (Centre for Alternative Technology)
Colette Pitts and Karen Mills (Collective Learning)
Rhys Bebb (Eco Schools Wales/Keep Wales Tidy)
WRAP would like to thank the staff and pupils at the following secondary schools in Newport for their contributions and support during the development of these materials:
Basseleg School
Duffryn High School
Hartridge High School
St Julian’s School
This project was supported by[2]:
Simms Recycling Solutions, Newport City Council, Newport Wastesavers, Waste Awareness Wales and the Welsh Assembly Government
Image credits
Huw John Powerpoint slide 1
Sims Recycling Solutions slides 2,3,4,5,7,10
Basel Action Network slide 8
Centre for Alternative Technology photographs (appendices)
Contents
Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. / 2Overview: ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Disposing of WEEE responsibly ………………………………………………………………………………………. / 3
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Lesson Plan ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… / 4
Lesson Outline ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Differentiation ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Further activities ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… / 6
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Useful References and Resources …………………………………………………………………………………………….
Getting Further Help and Advice……………………………………………………………………………………………….. / 9
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Appendices ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Classroom pictures ……………………………………………………………………………………………………
Density of common plastics …………………………………………………………………………………………….
Jumping ring construction and use …………………………………………………………………………………… / 11
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Introduction
For schools involved in a WEEE collection day/event these materials and notes are intended to provide ideas for ways in which the educational value of the day for pupils can be enhanced and enriched. Involvement in the day itself not only provides opportunities for community participation but also actively encourages young people to examine the impact of their actions and choices locally and globally and become active global citizens.
The main classroom activity that is described, lends itself most readily to Science or Design and Technology but there are numerous opportunities to extend the work to other subjects – particularly Geography; and to link the work to various cross curricular themes, frameworks or strands such as PSE/PSHE within the different curricula. As one of the fastest growing industries recycling also provides ample opportunities to explore careers and the world of work.
Overview
Lesson Plan
Prior knowledge
No prior knowledge is required, but familiarity with the following would be useful:
· We need to burn fossil fuels for energy and this creates carbon dioxide gas.
· Greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change.
· Magnets attract ferrous metals.
· Some materials will float and sink in water.
There are also many cross curricular opportunities outlined later in this document.
Room requirements
· Science Lab or DT room with benches for group work in 3’s or 4’s.
· Access to water taps.
· Work benches or tables that won’t get damaged by water.
· Data projector and speakers.
· Computer for power point and video.
Resources required
· 16 x items of a varied range of scrapped Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE).
· 8 x 1 litre plastic beakers or measuring jugs
· 8 x strong magnets.
· A perforated plastic tray with a mixture of pre washed shredded WEEE waste[3] including low and high density plastic, steel, and aluminium. The low density plastics should be polypropylene and /or LDPE and the higher density a mixture of ABS and solid polystyrene. A table of common plastic densities is given at the end of the lesson plan.
· 8 x 500g containers of table salt.
· Paper towels.
· A copy of “Home Sweet Home” video. Available from http://www.anitasancha.co.uk. A low resolution copy can be watch free on line, or a high resolution copy can be downloaded for £3.99 or a DVD purchased for £5.99
Setting up the classroom
Setup the room so that pupils can work in groups of 3 or 4. Each group’s table should have at least two different types of WEEE such that the common materials (steel and plastic) and power source can be clearly identified.
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Lesson Outline
Time (mins) / Activity / Powerpoint Slides3 / Ask pupils if they had been aware of the collection day and whether they had been involved in any way
Describe what the collection day had entailed using power point images. / Slide 1 Newport WEEE collection. Pupils assiting with the collection
5 / Show video “Home sweet home”.
Ask what was making planet earth unhappy.
Discuss the major sources of CO2 emissions in a UK person’s lives. Heating, transport, food but most importantly the STUFF WE BUY.
Find out who the “shopaholics” are.
Ask “are there any other problems associated with Buying lots of stuff. Points to bring out are pollution associated with production, distribution and disposal, as well as resource depletion. Especially oil and metals in short supply such as copper or lead.
Ask about what evidence they have to support this. – rising fuel prices, and roof lead and copper wire being stolen as the scrap value increases.
5 / Establish what WEEE stands for. (Waste Electrical and Electrical Equipment)
Show the PowerPoint slide of the composition of waste from the Newport collections.
Ask pupils to check that the equipment they have on their table has a plug/socket/USB or can be powered by batteries.
Explain that if equipment has a plug/socket or has batteries it can be recycled. / Slide 2 Items of WEEE waiting to go into the recycling plant
5 / Ask pupils to identify the most common materials in the equipment. – plastic and steel.
Other materials being aluminium and copper.
Get the pupils to identify the 2 most significant materials – steel (ferrous) and plastic.
5 / Tell pupils that there are large factories that take up to 100,000 tonnes of WEEE waste per year and separate it into the various types of metals and plastics so that it can be recycled by plastic and metal manufacturers. Show slides of equipment piled up and going into the factory.
Ask pupils what goes on in these factories. How are the objects they see in front of them split up (separated) into different types of material.
Discuss with the class how this could be done.
Tell pupils that there are in fact very few workers in the factory. Nearly everything is done by machines. Show slides of the shredded and sorted materials
Tell pupils that the WEEE is broken into small pieces or shredded. / Slide 3 Shredded and sorted WEEE
5 / Share the mixed tray of shredded waste between the groups and explain that it’s of no use unless the materials are separated into to separate piles of very high purity.
Ask how the factory might separate the materials. Draw out their ideas; magnets, floatation, weight etc and discuss each.
Tell pupils their task this lesson is to sort their mixed materials into separate piles.
5 / Handout the magnets and ask pupils to separate the ferrous material into a separate pile.
Show the slide of the big magnetic drum used to separate ferrous materials in the factory. / Slide 5 Magnetic drum
5 / Ask pupils to look at what is left. Is the plastic all of the same type? Some are hard and some more flexible. Show the power point slide of the different types of plastic. How can these be separated?
Show them a measuring jug and ask if that gives them any clues. Tell them that different materials will have different densities; some will float and some will sink in water. Handout jugs, tell groups to fill to 500ml and separate out the floating and sinking material into separate piles. / Slide 4 Different types of plastic
5 / Ask The sinking material contains metal and plastic. How can they be separated as they are both non magnetic? Show the jumping ring apparatus and explain that an electric current through a coil of wire creates a magnetic field and an a.c. current produces a changing magnetic field. Show the copper and steel rings and Ask the pupils to predict what will happen to the steel and copper rings when the coil is energised. Demonstrate that a changing magnetic field will repel a non ferrous conductor. This can be used to separate non ferrous metals from other materials.
3 / Why bother to recycle? – saving raw materials. Show slides bauxite mining and the aluminium extraction plant. Brainstorm problems: Loss of biodiversity, loss of productive land, resource depletion, not only bauxite but also the fossil fuels needed for energy at every stage in the process. / Slide 6 Bauxite mining
Slide 7 Recycling scrap aluminium
3 / Why bother to recycle? - Looking after people and the environment. Show the slide of what happens to WEEE goods if they are not properly disposed of by us and are sent overseas. Discuss whether this is fair. Get the class to think about what we in Britain need to do to make sure that people in other countries don’t suffer because of us buying new equipment.
Pic 1 Inside the burn houses Guiyu China
Women sit by the fireplaces and cook imported computer parts
Pic 2 Lagos Nigeria
Children standing in front of smouldering electronic waste . urned elctronic waste produces carcinogenic and highly toxic chemicals. These children live next to the dump.
Source: Basel Action Network / Slide 8 Toxic waste
3 / Why bother to recycle? - saving energy and carbon dioxide. Refer to the Climate Change Act[4]. Discuss the implications for the pupils of an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 – they will be in their 50’s. Unless energy saving and renewable energy measures are adopted it will mean heating houses, driving cars, using computers etc only 1 day in 5. Pupils to discuss in their groups whether this type of life would be acceptable to them and what alternatives there might be.
Energy reduction measures such as recycling will be vital if we are to live the sort of lives we would like.
3 / Show slides of the Sims WEEE plant in Newport. Linking the work that the pupils had done in the classroom with what happens in real life. / Slide 9
3 / Quick fire questions to finish off. Go round each group and ask them questions to see how much they had learnt. Some suggestions:
What happens to WEEE if it’s not properly disposed of in the UK?
Why is making Aluminium so bad for the environment?
What does WEEE stand for and how can you work out if something is WEEE?
The energy that’s saved by recycling aluminium can run a TV for how many hours?
What is ferrous metal? And how can it be separated?
How can different plastics be separated?
Differentiation
More able pupils could be given the basic equipment and the task of sorting their shredded WEEE attempt it with little direction. The properties of magnets and the concept of materials of different densities floating or sinking should be well established.
If more time is available or some groups finish earlier the remaining sinking material may be further separated by adding common salt to the water to increase its density. As a guide 36g of table salt in 500ml of water increased its density sufficiently to separate mixed ABS and polystyrene. The exact quantity required will change depending on the plastics being used.
Less able pupils can concentrate more on the physical aspects of separating different materials. The different qualities of different plastics can be explored by careful examination of samples in terms of their stiffness, brittleness, density. Samples of shredded plastic can be compared with the plastic used in different parts of the WEEE equipment on display.
Further activities
· Investigation of the total life story of raw materials e.g. iron ore for a product that is recycled and one that is disposed of at the end of its life. The “where’s the impact” card set detailed in the resources section is a very good tool for bringing this alive.
· Thinking about sustainable product design. How can products be made in a sustainable way? Aspects to consider are:
o The energy used in manufacture.
o The energy used in use.
o The life expectancy of the product.
o The concept of built in redundancy.
o The effect it has on the livelihood and well being of the people who contribute to each stage of its production.
o The abundance of the raw materials needed to make the product.
· Product pairs: looking at pairs of products designed to do the same task and comparing their qualities of sustainability. Examples could include different types or torches – wind up, normal battery powered, solar etc.
· Performing a survey of school and household waste and using data from the BIR report (see resources section) to calculate which type of waste recycling or reduction would result in the largest energy and carbon dioxide savings.
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Useful References and Resources
Vital waste graphics. (UNEP/GRID Arendal publications)
A free UN download with lots of information and graphics. It covers all aspects of waste from a global environmental and humanitarian perspective.
www.grida.no/publications
Report on the Environmental Benefits of Recycling. Bureau of international recycling.
A technical report looking in detail at the environmental aspects of recycling different materials. A useful reference document giving energy and CO2 savings of different processes.
www.bir.org/pdf/BIR_CO2_report.pdf
The living planet report 2008. A regular World Wildlife Fund publication giving an up to date assessment of the ecological state of the planet. It uses eco footprinting to look at human activity around the world and is very good at emphasising fair shares.
http://www.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet_report
Eco-schools have some good downloadable lesson plans for waste and consumption. Try the KS3waste minimization lesson in the climate change section.
www.eco-schools.org
Sims Recycling Solutions web site has some excellent online animations of what actually happens in a WEEE recycling plant. In addition to some good “did you know?” facts and UN recycling reports