Washing-line Game (Activity taken from ZSL ‘Green Team’ session for Key Stage 3 pupils*) Props: • Length of string, at least 2m • 8x wooden pegs • Piece of newspaper, old orange peel, cotton sock, pair of tights, steel can, aluminium drinks can, plastic bag, plastic bottle. Script: “We are responsible for all kinds of waste. Solid litter, chemical pollution and air pollution. We happily dump all this pollution out into the World without a second thought. So what happens to it once it’s out of sight? Does it just go away? No, it doesn’t, it goes somewhere and we need to think about where it goes and what affect it has. “Let’s play the ‘washing line game’. We need to place this rubbish on the line in the order that it will biodegrade (turn back into soil).”
Get two volunteers to hold the ends of the line. Place all the rubbish on the floor and get them to suggest which item will degrade first. Get them to peg it onto the line. Ask them to suggest how long it might take each item to turn back into soil. “Substances like paper, peel and cotton will degrade quickly through the impact of weather and attack by organisms in the soil. Man made fibres like nylon take much longer. How old will you be in 40 years? These tights may only just be completely degraded by then! Steel will rust gradually and become incorporated in to soil within 50 years but aluminium takes much longer to break up as it isn’t so easily attacked by oxygen. Plastic bags tend to shred into smaller particles but take a long time to do so and remain in the soil for hundreds of years. This is because they are water proof and not digestible by organisms. Some plastics will never go away. The bottles simply get flattened and remain as a plastic layer in the soil**.
“So what can you do today to make a difference? Start by reducing the amount you use. So, less consumption = less rubbish/waste. Next, try re-using what you have. Plastic bottles can be re-filled over and over again, bags taken back to the shop and re-filled and socks and tights can be mended. If you can’t re-use it, recycle what you can. Recycling usually uses less energy than making a product from raw materials. Think…the Earth has limited resources.” *Activity idea originally from an ETN training course **Facts and figures sourced from: The Marine Conservation Society website (mcsuk.org)