• Buy Nothing Day

  This lesson plan focuses students attention on the issue of consumerism and asks them to consider its benefits and drawbacks.  Students identify the different influences on their spending habits with special attention to the role of the media. ...

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• Reducing Global Consumption

  This resource focuses attention on the relationship between  human consumption and environmental degradation, with particular attention paid to declining biodiversity.  Students first become familiar with  a number of concepts including...

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• The Story of Stuff

  This video provides a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. Using cartoon graphics, host Anne Leonard explores the many connections between global economic, environmental, and social issues, and challenges...

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• Happiness

  In this animated video Oliver, Brad and Clementine participate in the Challenge of the Sphinx where they are given 60 seconds in a toy store to collect whatever objects make them happy. Brad and Oliver collect shopping carts full of toys, but are only...

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• The Wasteland

  CBS 60 Minutes follows the "recycling" of e-waste from Denver Colorado  to a community in southern China. In the process they uncover an underground network of illegal smuggling that starts with American consumers "doing the right thing" in dropping...

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• Where does e-waste end up?

  Where does e-waste end up? answers the question it poses and the answer in this case is India, where the poor risk their health to salvage valuable elements used in their manufacture. The discussion raises and answers a number of questions-why India?...

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• Re-thinking Progress

  'Re-thinking Progress' explores how through a change in perspective we can re-design the way our economy works.  It suggest that we move from our current liner economic structure based on take, make, and dispose to a circular economy where we build...

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• Needs vs Wants

  In developed nations like Canada we live in a world of abundance where the desire for the latest products often outweighs the social and environmental costs of our purchases.  This lesson develops the financial decision-making skills of young students...

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• Understanding the Challenges of Finite Resources

  This lesson is part of a series of lessons which introduce students to a different way of thinking about how our economy could work: a circular economy. The series builds up exactly how a circular economy is different from the status quo, and looks at...

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• Personal Consumption and Climate Change

  The toolkit is designed to support and encourage teachers, tutors and lecturers to integrate some of the concepts of sustainable development into teaching and learning. It focuses in particular on using photographs and a range of active teaching and learning...

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• Perils of Plastic

  Students learn about the world's largest "landfill," make a connection to their own lives, and calculate how much trash they generate in a week, a year, ten years.

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• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

  Building on Needs vs Wants,  this multi-step lesson contributes to the theme of responsible consumption by focusing attention on how we all can and should work to protect the earth’s natural resources. Through a number of engaging activities...

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• Buy, Use, Toss?

  Buy, Use, Toss? is a two-week unit that provides multiple entry points to help students think critically about consumption. This series of ten thoroughly planned lessons lead your students through an exploration of the systems of producing and consuming...

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• You Can Live Without Producing Trash

  Did you know the average American produces 4.3 pounds of trash per day? In this eye-opening short video, Laura Ling will show us how one New York woman is making an effort to change the way we think about waste. Over the past two years, Lauren Singer...

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• Circular Economy Explained

  This is a short video explaining the concept of the Circular Economy. The circular economy and the associated concept of system thinking represent a significant contribution in moving towards a sustainable future. The video is an effective introduction...

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• Trading Textiles

  Trading textiles is a lesson plan built for students to reflect on the impact of the textile industry and the affects on our environment and options they could implement in order to diverting textile waste from landfills. In small groups students will...

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• Tuyen's Tremendous Trash Tour - Book 5

  Earthly continues her travels to Hanoi, Vietnam where she meets her friend Tuyen to explore the local landfill. Climbing the mountains of trash with Tuyen's sister Minh, they learn that not all garbage belongs at the dump. Although the whole experience...

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• Fashion's Waste Problem

  This short video explains the facts about textile waste in the fashion industry and the concept of fast fashion. The hosts of the program describe the various ways in which textile waste is produced and the impact it has on the planet. The videos also...

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• The Secret Lives of Clothes

  This short program examines 'ethical fashion' and focuses on the working conditions of the hidden people who make our clothes. The hosts illustrate the difference between minimum wage and a living wage while also discussing examples of modern slavery,...

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