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The
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High School Lesson Plan: “Human
Impact On the Environment”
Brooklyn high school teachers Scott
Weber and Jim Bacchi created a lab entitled "Human Impact On The
Environment" for their
biology class in the spring of 2005. Here’s how they did it in
their own words:
We gathered info from a variety of sources on the impact of overconsumption
on local environments and peoples, specifically via those common products
we buy through typically outsourced companies, like coca-cola, sneakers,
computers, t-shirts, and the like.
STEP 1: We put our students in groups to figure out, for example, how
many pairs of sneakers they go through in a year and got a class total.
STEP 2: Then we provided them with formulas and stats to determine
how many gallons of water are used, how many pounds of various pollutants
are dumped, how much money each child laborer makes, etc..., per pair,
and multiplied by the class total.
The amount of raw materials used for one pair of sneakers multiplied
out to the amount of material and pollutants for a year's worth for
one average class quickly grows exponentially, as you can imagine.
STEP 3: In the discussion at the end of the lab, we said..."Imagine,
then, if instead of purchasing an average of 3 pairs per year, SOME
of you decided to keep your sneakers a little longer. Not give them
up entirely mind you, just keep them around for a bit longer. Suppose
SOME of you decided to make 2 pairs, or even one, last all year long?
Any volunteers?
How much water would we save? How many pounds of pollutants would we
NOT dump into local rivers?
Anyway, we played around a bit with the numbers to imagine a 50% decrease
in amount of sneakers purchased, and calculated the obvious decrease
in pollutants created and raw materials used up.
STEP 4: THEN, we emphasized this: If, with a 50% decrease in sneaker
consumption we saved on average, say, 1000 pounds of pollutants from
being dumped, per class per year, what if we extended this by our entire
school (we have 4000 students)? And then extended that to the city,
and even the state? When you start tacking on the zeros to the pounds
of waste not produced, all because every other person has decided to
buy 2 instead of 3 pairs of sneakers in a year, it gets overwhelming
quick!
STEP 5: And lastly, we asked, HOW might a campaign like this be organized?
What should our message be? How would we get it across, and to whom?
Because, though small changes can make a difference to YOU, we need
to be organized if we are to get those small changes adding up to big
ones.
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