Sustainability: Reduce Your Environmental Impact!

Background Information for Teachers

Nowadays, reports on climate change, global warming, air and water pollution, or animal extinction are published on a daily basis. All of these issues are caused by human actions on Earth. We use our planet's natural resources, such as fossil fuels, minerals, trees, or water to generate energy, food, and other products that we consume every day. As a consequence of this consumption, we face the depletion of freshwater resources, global warming due to emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases contributing to the greenhouse effect, destruction of natural habitats, and unprocessed trash (Figure 1). These issues are described in reports released by global organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the United Nations (UN). This is why sustainability has become an increasingly important topic over the last century. For a refresher on the concept of sustainability, read the background section in the Sustainability: How Our Actions Affect the Environment lesson plan.

Image Credit: Pixabay / Free for commercial use

Four photos show the changes to the landscape and environment caused by humans. From top-left to bottom-right the photos include: a landfill, a section of forest that has been cut down, smoke being emitted from chimneys at a factory, and trash washing up on the shore of a beach.

Figure 1. Human impacts on Earth include landfills full of trash, deforestation, carbon dioxide emissions, and environmental pollution.

To mitigate or reverse the negative impacts our actions have on the environment, these issues must be resolved. A lot of research and development focuses on new technologies and solutions that help minimize our impacts on Earth's systems. For example, wind and solar energy technologies are being developed to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels, electric or hybrid cars reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, industrial processes are being optimized to use resources more efficiently, and water-saving irrigation technologies are being developed for the agricultural industry. To your students, these challenges might seem overwhelming. It is helpful for them to realize that there are plenty of things every individual or community can do to contribute to positive change on a global scale. These actions are primarily about how we behave as consumers of food, energy, water, and stuff on a daily basis. These four factors have the biggest environmental impact on our planet.

In this lesson, students will use the online tool Your Plan, Your Planet, to assess their individual impact on the environment by evaluating some of their personal consumer habits in each of the above-mentioned areas. Based on their findings, they will come up with their own action plans on how to reduce their environmental impact. As they gather data on their consumption of water, food, energy, or stuff before and after putting their proposed actions into practice, they can realize their own agency and ability to effect change.

Additional Background Links

• About the Sustainable Development Goals, United Nations
• Energy Efficiency and Conservation, U.S. Energy Information Administration
• Water Conservation at EPA, United States Environmental Protection Agency
• From linear to circular - Accelerating a proven concept, World Economic Forum
• Annual Report 2018: Putting the environment at the heart of people's lives, United Nations Environment Programme
• Global Warming of 1.5 C, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Municipal Solid Waste, United States Environmental Protection Agency
• What uses the most energy in your home?, Visual Capitalist
• The World Food Crisis: What is Behind it and What We Can Do, World Hunger Education Service

Prep Work (10 minutes)

• Make sure you navigate through each of the four areas (water, energy, food, and stuff) in Your Plan, Your Planet before you show it to your students. This will help you feel more comfortable presenting this tool to your class.
• Print out a Student worksheet for each student or share the pdf with all your students in Google Drive.

Engage (30 minutes)

1. Start with a discussion to create awareness of environmental issues.

   Is anyone aware of any recent environmental news? What was it about?

   Have students share their stories. If necessary, prompt students by asking them what stories they have heard about pollution, freshwater scarcity, changing environments, climate change, endangered species, etc.

   Why do you think we have these problems? Why do we have pollution, why do environments change, or why do animals become extinct?

   Collect students' answers. Elicit responses that focus on how human activities can damage the environment.

2. Using the ideas from students' answers, point out that human activities have significantly altered the environment and that these changes can have significant impacts on Earth. Then continue the discussion by questioning how their everyday actions impact the environment.

   How much water do you think you are using when taking a 10-minute shower?

   Based on the fact that regular shower heads have a flow rate of 2.5 gallons/minute, a 10-minute shower uses 25 gallons of water. If you shower every day, this equals 9,125 gallons of water per year, which could fill 31 hot tubs!

   What appliances in your home do you think use the most energy?

   According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration in 2017, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,399 kilowatt hours (kWh), an average of 867 kWh per month. The Visual Capitalist reported that cooling and heating takes up 47% of a household's energy use, followed by water heaters (14%), washers and dryers (13%), lighting (12%), refrigerators (4%), electric ovens (3-4%), TV, DVD, cable box, etc. (3%), dishwasher (2%), and computers (1%).

   Can you guess how much water it takes to produce one serving (0.25 pounds, or about 1 cup sliced, or about the size of your fist) of vegetables?

   It takes about 3 gallons of water. This means the water value of one serving of vegetables is 3 gallons of water.

   How much trash in pounds do you think an average person generates each day?

   According to EPA data from 2013, the average person in the United States generates about 4.5 pounds of trash every day.

   A single tree can absorb about 48 pounds of carbon dioxide in one year. How many miles do you think you have to drive in an average gasoline powered car to produce the same amount of CO2?

   According to the EPA, a typical passenger vehicle emits about 0.9  pounds (404 grams) of carbon dioxide per mile. This totals about 45 pounds of carbon dioxide for 50 miles. This is roughly equal to the amount of carbon dioxide (about 48 pounds) a single tree can absorb in one year.

3. Explain to your students that many things that we do every day contribute to the global environmental issues that they discussed before. The biggest impacts come from how we produce and use food, water, energy, and stuff such as clothing, tools, plastics, or electronics on a daily basis. Based on a person's lifestyle and actions, his or her environmental impact (or ecological footprint) can be small or big.

   Based on the answers to the questions above, can you describe or give other examples of how our everyday actions affect the environment in each of the four areas (water, food, energy, stuff)?

   Collect students' answers and together make a list of all the actions they mention matter in each of the four areas (food, water, energy, stuff).

Explore (120 minutes)

1. Tell your students that the goal of this lesson is to come up with an action plan on how they can reduce their ecological footprint. They will not only propose their ideas on paper, but also implement them to test the effectiveness of their actions. In order to do so, they will first need to learn more about the impacts of their everyday actions on the environment.
2. Introduce Your Plan, Your Planet to your students and explain that this tool will allow them to assess their environmental impact in each of the four areas (water, food, energy, and stuff) based on some of their everyday activities. They will use this tool as inspiration to come up with an action plan to minimize their impact in one of these areas.
3. Provide each student with an electronic device that has access to the Your Plan, Your Planet tool. Give them 5–10 minutes to walk through all the steps of each of the four areas. Ask them to make notes about their findings while using the tool.
4. Once students are done with their initial explorations, ask them to briefly share their observations.

   What are some things that you learned while walking through Your Plan, Your Planet?

   Which of your findings surprised you most?

   Were there any steps or results that you would have wanted more information about?

5. Focus students' attention on how environmental impacts can be measured.

   When it comes to our actions, it is not enough to know that they have an environmental impact; you also want to be able to measure the magnitude of this impact. How did Your Plan, Your Planet quantify the impacts of certain activities, products, or actions? Can you give some examples?

   Your Plan, Your Planet uses different units of measurements for quantifying environmental impacts. Water usage is measured in gallons of water per year and energy usage is quantified in kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. Additionally, the tool indicates the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for certain food items or actions. Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions is a standard unit for measuring carbon footprints. Its value specifies how much carbon dioxide in pounds or tons of CO2 it took to produce a specific product or to generate a certain amount of energy. For example: 1 large egg has a CO2e value of 0.49 pounds. This means that 0.49 pounds of CO2 are emitted in the process of producing 1 large egg. Similarly, Your Plan, Your Planet also determines the "water value" [in gallons] of certain food items by calculating how much water it took to produce that food item.

6. Ask students to go back into the Your Plan, Your Planet tool and click on the information buttons ("i" icon) at each step to find out more about these units of measurements and how the tool makes all its calculations.
7. Tell students that now it is time to start working on an action plan that they can implement to reduce their environmental impact. Each student needs to pick one of the areas within Your Plan, Your Planet (water, food, energy, stuff). Make sure all the areas are covered by the class. Then tell them that based on their findings in Your Plan, Your Planet, they need to come up with at least one idea for how to reduce their environmental impact. These ideas can include a technological approach or the implementation of other actions such as behavioral changes. Encourage them to do their own research to get their own ideas on how they can reduce their impact and methods to measure their impact. To guide your students through this process, provide them with the following instructions. They should:
   1. Explain why it is important to reduce their environmental impact in their selected area.
   2. Find out which factors or human actions contribute to the environmental impact in their selected area. (These can include but should also go beyond the examples provided by Your Plan, Your Planet.)
   3. Evaluate possible actions that can reduce the environmental impact in their selected area that they can implement in their everyday lives. (These can include but should also go beyond the actions provided by Your Plan, Your Planet.)
   4. Select one specific action from the list to implement.
   5. Think about how the effectiveness of their action can be quantified. Then, specify how often they would need to take these measurements.
   6. Come up with a concrete action plan to implement their idea and measure its effectiveness.
8. Based on their ideas, have students write a short proposal on what action they want to take and how they intend to measure its effectiveness. A template for this proposal is provided in the student worksheet. Remind them that they actually have to implement their proposed idea, so their proposal should be realistic. Give students time, as needed, to research their own ideas and finish their proposal or assign as homework.
9. Collect the proposals from each student and do a "reality check" on their ideas. Specifically, you want to assess if the proposed actions can actually be implemented and tested and whether the suggested quantification methods are reasonable. Note: The quantification component might be challenging for students. In addition to the measurement units provided by Your Plan, Your Planet, students can also come up with their own units of measurement. Here are some examples of what measurements you can suggest to quantify the impact of their actions.
   1. Number of bags/pounds of trash per day.
   2. Gallons of water used per day (look at water meter).
   3. Hours per day certain water-using appliances have been in use (shower, dishwasher, washing machine, faucets, etc.). It might be helpful for students to do some research on how much water certain appliances use per hour or day, so they can make their own water usage calculations.
   4. Number, weight, or volume of certain food items that have been thrown out per day.
   5. Quantity of other consumables that have been thrown out per day (plastic bottles, plastic bags, clothes, toys, etc.).
   6. Kilowatt hours of energy used per day (look at electricity meter).
   7. Hours per day certain electrical appliances have been in use (TV, heating/cooling, dish-washer, lights, washing machine, etc.). It might be helpful for students to do some research on how much electricity certain appliances use per hour or day, so they can make their own energy usage calculations.
10. Once you have validated all ideas, tell your students it is time to test their ideas. First, however, they will have to measure what their baseline environmental impact is before implementing their proposed actions, in order to be able to measure its effectiveness. To do this, students will use their proposed quantification method to monitor their environmental impact in their selected area for one week without implementing their suggested action. Direct them to make a spreadsheet in Google Sheets where they can enter their data. If your students have difficulties using Sheets, you can refer them to this resource, which teaches them the digital skills to create a spreadsheet on their own. Instruct them to share their spreadsheets with you so you can monitor your students' progress during that week. If you notice any errors in students' measurements or a lack of data, notify your students either in class or within Sheets.
11. Following the first week of measurements, make sure that each student has entered all their data into their spreadsheets. Then, gather your students and tell them that they have completed their baseline measurements. Now they are ready to implement their ideas! Instruct them to start implementing their suggested action to reduce their environmental impact right after class. They should continue to monitor and measure their impact for another week with their action implemented using the same quantification method(s) as before. Again, they should enter all their data into the same spreadsheet to find out how their impact changes in the second week.
12. Once the second week is over, direct your students to prepare a 2–3 minute slideshow about their project. Have them present their data and, based on their findings, explain what impact their action had. More details on the presentation are given in the student worksheet. If your students have difficulties creating their slides, you can refer them to this resource, which walks them through how to make a presentation with Slides. Give students time, as needed, to finish their presentation or assign as homework.

Reflect (90 minutes)

1. Have each student deliver their 2–3 minute presentation to the rest of the class. After each presentation, have a very short question and answer session.
2. Once all students have presented their data, encourage them to reflect on their findings.

   Which ideas did you find worked best and had the biggest impact?

   Which ideas did not work that well?

   Why do you think some of the actions were more effective than others?

3. Calculate the collective positive environmental impact your class made after implementing all of their action plans. As a class, make a new spreadsheet for each of the four areas: water, energy, stuff, and food. Use these sheets to combine the results of each student in that area. Then together, calculate how much their collective environmental impact changed in the second week: How much total water, food or energy did they save? How much less trash did they produce?, etc.
4. Based on their class data, have students summarize what they found each individual can do to reduce their impact on the environment, then ask your students to think on a larger scale.

   Now that you have demonstrated what each individual can do to reduce their ecological footprint, what do you think are things that families can do? What are things that a whole community (such as the school) could do to create a more sustainable future? How big would the combined impact of all our families or the whole school be if they all adopted the same action plans that we did as a class?

   Collect all answers from your students. Use your gathered data to extrapolate what the impact of all families or the whole school would be based on the total number of all family members or the whole school population.

Assess

• Online quiz, assignable in any LMS
• Quiz (pdf) and answer key (pdf)

Make Career Connections

Discussing or reading about these careers can help students make important connections between the in-class lesson and STEM job opportunities in the real world.

Sustainability Specialist

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Career Profile

Sustainability Specialists support and implement programs that focus on improving the environment. They often work on a variety of projects with many different clients. For example, they could help companies find ways to reduce their carbon footprint, or they could support a factories to develop new processes that reduce their water and electricity consumption. Read more

Environmental Scientist

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Career Profile

Environmental Scientists use their knowledge of natural sciences to protect the environment. They study the environment to find out how human activities such as food, water, or energy consumption affect human, plant, and animal life. One of their goals is to come up with solutions or actions that minimize the negative impacts on the environment. This often requires measuring the quality of air, food, water, and soil to determine ways to clean the environment. Read more

Soil and Water Conservationist

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Career Profile

A Soil and Water Conservationist is part scientist, part educator, and part environmentalist. They manage, improve, and protect the Earth's natural resources. For example, they help farmers, ranchers, and forest managers to make most productive use of their water and soil and teach them to use these resources in a sustainable manner. Read more

Lesson Plan Variations

• As an alternative, instead of asking your students for individual action plan proposals, ask your whole class to collaboratively come up with some ideas for each of the four areas that they could implement in their classroom. Select one action for each area and jointly determine a method of quantification for each one. As a class, do the proposed measurements in your classroom for one week before and for another week after implementing your action plan. This allows you to measure your classroom impact instead of the individual impact of each student.
• Extend your impact beyond your classroom! Together, come up with some measures that could reduce the environmental impact of your school. Try to implement these measures as a class and have students determine how effective these measures are over time.
• Students can continue to measure the effectiveness of their action(s) beyond the first week. Encourage them to also act in more than one area to reduce their ecological footprint even more.
• Find more data on how much water, food, energy, or stuff an average person wastes each day. Then relate these numbers to your students' findings before and after they have implemented their action plan.
• Based on your findings and discussions, have students make a flyer to create awareness about this topic in their communities. The flyer should state the problem and list actions individuals or communities can take to reduce their environmental impact.