What’s the cost?

Year level

Lower Secondary to Middle Secondary with a simplified activity for younger students listed at end of the lesson plan.

Lesson description

Students carry out a case study of selected products, for example, orangescomparingadvantages and disadvantages offresh orange juice squeezed at home from locally produced oranges with packaged orange juice from the supermarket.

In this lesson students will:

  • carry out a life cycle assessment of a locally producedproduct and a packaged product
  • compare the amount of ‘food miles’between the two products
  • compare the amount of packaging waste between the products
  • evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of packaged versus non packaged produce.

Curriculum links

Year 7

The ways consumers and producers respond to and influence each other in the market (Economics & Business - ACHEK017)

Years 7 and 8

Examine and prioritise competing factors including social, ethical and sustainability considerations in the development of technologies and designed solutions to meet community needs for preferred futures (Design & Technologies - ACTDEK029)

Year 8

Develop questions about an economic or business issue or event, and plan and conduct an investigation or project (Economics & Business –ACHES004)

Year 9

Reflect on the intended and unintended consequences of economic and business decisions (Economics & Business - ACHES049)

Years 9 and 10

Critically analyse factors, including social, ethical and sustainability considerations that impact on designed solutions for global preferred futures and the complex design and production processes involved (Design & Technologies - ACTDEK040)

Investigate and make judgements on how the characteristics and properties of materials, systems, components, tools and equipment can be combined to create designed solutions (Design & Technologies - ACTDEK046)

Year 10

Reflect on the intended and unintended consequences of economic and business decisions (Economics & Business - ACHES061)

Materials

  • bottled orange juice from supermarket
  • oranges from markets
  • bottled apple juice from supermarket
  • apples from market
  • tomatoes from market
  • tinned tomatoes from overseas
  • tinned pineapple
  • fresh pineapple

Procedure

  1. Hold up a locally grown tomato and a tin of tomatoes and ask students which product they think is more environmentally friendly. Why?
  2. Discuss the concept of ‘food miles’.

Food miles are a way of attempting to measure how far food has travelled before it reaches the consumer. It is a good way of looking at the environmental impact of foods and their ingredients. It includes getting foods to you, but also getting waste foods away from you, and to the landfill! In other words, it is thinking about where food has come from and what environmental effects this has had.1

  1. Explain that students are going to work in small groups to research a fruit produced and packaged locally in Queensland compared with the same fruit produced, processed and packaged from overseas.

The life cycle assessment of the two products should include investigating the distance the product has travelled, resources used to transport product, resources used to produce, process and transport packaging, waste left over after consumption of product, resources used to dispose or recycle waste, long term environmental effect of packaging.

  1. Students then present results to the rest of class as a power point presentation.

1

Simplified activity

As a class, students compare the amount of ‘food miles’(or in Australia ‘food kilometres’) between tomatoes grown on the Sunshine Coast compared with tinned tomatoes from Italy.

Discuss other resources that are used in creating the tins, in processing the tomatoes and in transporting the tomatoes to Australia. Ask students how we can encourage people to buy locally-grown products.

Brisbane City Council

Rethink Your Rubbish Lesson Plan: Packaging – What’s the cost?