Session 2 - Recycling & Sustainability.

Today we began the topic of recycling/sustainability.

Starter activity - Group Q&A discussion about the meaning & comparison of words.

Q1. Tutor asked: What is cycling?

Learners answered:

• It is a sport.
  
• It is what people of all ages use for leisure & transport.
• It keeps you healthy because it is an exercise that gets your heart pumping & it's good for your circulation.
• It was in the Olympics & the Tour de France caused lots of excitement in Yorkshire & throughout the world.

ACTIVITY: We held a group discussion & the main points mentioned were:

• It brought lots of people to Yorkshire so it was good business & for our tourism.
• Many more people are cycling to work/commuting.
• Councils are starting to develop sustainable transport policies & changing roads to include cycle paths.
• Scunthorpe is very cycle friendly with lots of safe cycle paths.

Therefore we agreed that cycling was good for us & also good for the environment.  It is helping to reduce our carbon footprint.

Q2. Tutor asked: So what is 'Recycling' & does the word have any relationship to cycling?

To answer this question we went to the computer suite to look at the definition for the word 'recycling'.  We found it means: To convert (waste) into re-usable material.

So we decided that apart from the meaning of 'cycle', to go round & round, the words are not really connected.

We looked at the common symbol for recycling which has been adopted worldwide & learners said they would recognise this symbol & they had seen it on drinks cans, plastic bottles & books.  They would look out for it on any materials they used at home.

There is a logo associated with the symbol for recycling: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle.

ACTIVITY:  We held an opinion poll to find out what learners thought was the best form of dealing with waste.  Is it best to reduce waste (not to create it in the first place), or to re-use waste (for example to replace a perfectly good working kettle with a new one that matches your new kitchen colours, you might give it to a friend or relation), or to recycle it (to sort it into different categories of waste to be processed & made into something else), or to place it in Landfill (a Tip or Dump site)?  The results were displayed on papers with Bingo dobber dots for calculating the favourite solution.

This picture of our opinion poll shows the starter activity & our additional opinion poll at the end of the session.  It is clear to see that some students did change their opinion as a result of our research & discussion on this topic.

We agreed to continue this topic next week.