Recycling:
Learning from Nepal
Promoting Excellence in Science Teaching and Learning
Objectives
 Recognise differences between
reducing, reusing and recycling.
 Compare the impacts of recycling
aluminium to obtaining the metal from
its ore.
 Evaluate evidence to make a decision
about the efficacy of recycling
2
Reduce, reuse, recycle…
3
How are they different?
Which do you do?
Reduce, reuse, recycle…
4
Reduce, reuse, recycle…
5
Reduce, reuse, recycle …
6
Is recycling worth the effort?
 Compare recycling aluminium
to extracting it from bauxite rock.
 Make a decision and justify it.
7
Dimaya lives in Nepal.
She sorts through waste.
She finds plastics that can be
recycled. She sells them to
a man who sells them to
a recycling factory.
The factory melts the plastic
and makes new things, like pots and bottles.
8
Dimaya also finds
colourful plastic bags.
She and her mum and sisters reuse
the bags. They cut the bags into long
strips, which they weave into baskets and sell.
9
Reuse challenge
What can you make
from old plastic bags or
used aluminium cans?
10
© wow-imports.com
© tesscaraluminumcraft@msn.com
Acknowledgements
This activity was produced by
the Association for Science Education in partnership with
Practical Action as part of the Global Learning Programme.
Promoting Excellence in Science Teaching and Learning
The GLP is a ground-breaking new
programme which will create a national
network of like-minded schools,
committed to equipping their students
to succeed in a globalised world by
helping them to deliver effective
teaching and learning about
international development and
global issues at Key Stages 2 and 3.
11
ASE is providing the science education
support for the Global Learning
Programme which is funded by
the Department for International
Development. This activity can be found
on the Global Learning Programme
www.glp-e.org.uk, ASE Primary upd8
primaryupd8.org.uk and Practical Action
practicalaction.org.uk/schools websites.
Student sheets
Recycling: learning from Nepal
Sheet no.
12
Title
Notes
SS1
Is recycling worth the effort? Energy,
waste and raw materials
Reusable. One per pair.
SS2
Is recycling worth the effort? Impacts
on people
Reusable. Cut into cards.
One per group of 6.
SS3
The efficacy of recycling
Is recycling worth the effort?
Energy, waste and raw materials
What to do
 Read the information.
 Copy and complete the table.
 Decide – is recycling worth the effort?
Recycled aluminium
Aluminium is recycled like this:
1 Separate and wash used cans.
2 Send a lorry to collect the cans.
3 Shred the cans and remove their paint.
Aluminium from the Earth
4 Heat to 660 ºC in a furnace. The aluminium melts.
All aluminium comes originally from the Earth’s crust.
But you cannot just dig aluminium from the ground.
Its atoms are joined to oxygen atoms, in aluminium oxide.
5 Pour the liquid aluminium into a mould.
Waste
Energy
The aluminium oxide is mixed with other substances in
bauxite rock.
 The process
makes little
waste.
 Making 1 kg  You can recycle
of aluminium
aluminium many,
needs 15 MJ
many times.
of energy,
Its properties do
including
not change.
lorry fuel.
To get aluminium from bauxite:
1 Crush the rock. Separate aluminium oxide from the
substances mixed with it.
2 Dissolve the aluminium oxide in a special solvent.
3 Pass a 200 000 amp electric current through the
solution. This splits up aluminium oxide to make
aluminium and other products.
Waste
 Step 1 makes ‘red mud’ waste.
 Step 3 makes carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.
Quality
Aluminium
from bauxite
Recycled
aluminium
Raw materials
Waste produced
Energy transferred
Energy
 Making 1 kg of aluminium needs 260 MJ of energy.
13
Red mud waste is alkaline (pH 10 – 13) and toxic. You cannot
farm or build on it. 100 kg of bauxite makes 60 kg of red mud.
STUDENT SHEET 1
Is recycling worth the effort?
What to do
Impacts on people
Allocate roles in your group Role play a web chat to compare
and read the role cards.
 the impacts on people of extracting aluminium from bauxite rock
 the impacts on people of recycling aluminium.
Fen, China
Britta, Iceland
Ebenezer, Jamaica
China produces more aluminium than
any other country in the world. We use
electricity to split up aluminium oxide.
I am worried because most of
the electricity is generated by
burning coal. This makes lots
of carbon dioxide, which is a
greenhouse gas, and also
sulfur dioxide gas, which
makes acid rain.
A new aluminium plant,
Fjardaál, opened near my
home in 2008. Ships bring in
aluminium oxide from far
away. At Fjardaál they use
electricity to extract aluminium from the
oxide. The aluminium company built a
new hydroelectric power station
specially. Aluminium is important for
packaging. It is used to make
aeroplanes because of its low density.
My mum works at Fjardaál, which is
good for our family, but the new power
station flooded land and damaged
plant and animal habitats.
In Jamaica we
make 4 million
tonnes of
aluminium oxide
every year. The
mines don’t look
good – they dig up lots of
trees before they get down to
the bauxite, destroying animal
habitats. The red mud waste
reservoirs are dangerous – I’m
not allowed to go near them. I
think we should abandon
bauxite mining and make
money from other things.
Agi, Hungary
Callum, UK
I live near the Ajka alumina plant. In
2010 one of the red mud reservoir
dams collapsed.
Washing and
separating our
cans is too much
effort. The lorry
that collects our
recycling is noisy and uses lots
of fuel. It’s better to get
aluminium from rock.
In China we dry most of our red mud,
and most of it goes to landfill. About 10%
of the dried red mud is used to make
bricks, which is good. I would like them
to use more of this waste product.
Dandak, India
India produces more than
3 million tonnes of aluminium
oxide each year. There is a
bauxite mine near me. It is
noisy and dusty, but my mum runs a shop
near the mine. Without the mine she
would have few customers. The money
she earns pays for my school uniform
– and my tablet computer.
14
A wave of red mud flooded
my village, killing 10 people.
The alkaline mud caused
terrible burns, and destroyed
all sorts of living things.
STUDENT SHEET 2
The efficacy of recycling:
 Read the
information
in the
table.
Material
 Use the web site to
find the facts you
need to complete
the table.
does it have the desired effects?
 Make a decision: Which materials in the table are worth recycling?
Why, or why not? Think about whether recycling the material cuts waste
and energy requirements, as well as whether recycling reduces the need for
primary resources such as trees for paper, sand for glass and oil for plastic.
Energy used to produce the
material by recycling
compared to producing it
from its primary resource
Example of how much energy
is saved by recycling
Number of times the
material can be
recycled
aluminium
5%
indefinitely
glass
30%
paper
Recycling 1 tonne of paper saves
enough energy to run a typical UK
home for 6 months.
white paper
5-7 times
brown paper
15-20 times
plastic
10%
15
http://www.recycling-guide.org.uk/facts.html
depends on
the plastic
STUDENT SHEET 3
Acknowledgements
This activity was produced by
the Association for Science Education in partnership with
Practical Action as part of the Global Learning Programme.
Promoting Excellence in Science Teaching and Learning
The GLP is a ground-breaking new
programme which will create a national
network of like-minded schools,
committed to equipping their students
to succeed in a globalised world by
helping them to deliver effective
teaching and learning about
international development and
global issues at Key Stages 2 and 3.
16
ASE is providing the science education
support for the Global Learning
Programme which is funded by
the Department for International
Development. This activity can be found
on the Global Learning Programme
www.glp-e.org.uk, ASE Primary upd8
primaryupd8.org.uk and Practical Action
practicalaction.org.uk/schools websites.