Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

5 minutes

Tune In: Where do your devices go?

20 minutes

Find Out: Who is changing the industry?

30 minutes

Take Action: What can we do?

5 minutes

Reflection

Tune In: What happens to our old devices?

Step 1.

Guide a discussion with your students, focusing on how they treat their e-products at the end of their product lives. Use the following prompts to draw out their experiences:

What was the last e-product you got rid of?
What was wrong with it?
What did you do with it?
Are there e-products in your household that are unused? What are you planning to do with these?

Explain to students that sometimes, when one component of a device breaks, we need to get rid of the whole item. Sometimes, you can pay to replace the part (screen, battery, etc.), but the whole item is often thrown away once one component is broken or the software is obsolete. So where does it go?

Each Local Government Area has different options and regulations around the disposal of e-waste. We recommend you look into your local council and the procedures for where your students live. Some places have no regulations, some have e-waste collection, and others have drop-off points for specific types of e-waste.

Ask the students: Once the device leaves your hands, what could happen to it? Write their answers where they can see them (whiteboard, butcher’s paper, smartboard, etc). Ask them to be as creative as possible! These might include:

goes to landfill
is donated to charity
the materials are recycled
the components are recycled
is given to someone else
gets lost on the train
is turned into something else

You may like to show this video to your class which features Project Re-Play, a company that holds educational workshop experiences to build handheld gaming devices using upcycled electronic waste and recycled plastics.

Project Re-play (https://vimeo.com/865834628?share=copy)

Step 2.

AppCyclers is a social enterprise specialising in e-waste management founded in Northern Ghana. They aim to promote a safer, greener environment in Ghana and Africa. Watch the following interview with AppCyclers with your class until 3:59 mins.

Encourage students to think about how electronic waste accumulates and is dealt with over time, as well as the impacts this has on society and the environment. Discuss this with your students to draw out their understanding of the current situation.

AppCyclers (https://vimeo.com/865443496?share=copy)

You may also like to watch this interview with Karo Sambhav, who is an organisation in India aiming to make the circular economy possible and have a unique perspective on the e-waste crisis in this part of the world.

Karo Sambhav - (https://vimeo.com/865446001?share=copy)

Find Out: Who is changing the industry?

Step 1.

Display the visual explainer showing the Rs of Sustainability and what each R involves. You may like to distribute this Rs of Sustainability factsheet that briefly explains each R for students to keep handy.

Talk through the examples with your students. As you work through each ‘R’, look back to your list and see if any of their answers from the last task fall into that category. It doesn’t matter if students get some incorrect, particularly at the start. Once you work through the whole list, students should be able to put all of their answers in the correct sustainability category or identify that the answer was unsustainable (e.g. the device goes in landfill)

Step 2.

Explain to students that the e-waste problem is not merely the consumers' issue once their device reaches the end of its life. The Rs of sustainability should be used throughout the life cycle of products to utilise the circular economy and lessen the impacts on society and the environment. There are lots of businesses and organisations that are using these principles to have a positive effect on society!

Divide students into 9 groups and allocate each group to one of the case studies below. Each case study features an interview with a circular organisation created specifically for this unit. Students can watch the interview to hear directly from the business representatives and use the organisations' websites to gather their information.

Organisation	Closing the E-Loop Interview
Close the Loop Australian sustainability provider that helps companies enhance social responsibility. Works with the global imaging industry to design and manage highly efficient ink and toner take-back, recovery, and reuse programs.	Close the Loop (https://vimeo.com/863842327?share=copy)
The Reconnect Project Australian social enterprise that helps to close Australia's digital divide by providing refurbished mobile devices to people in need.	Reconnect Project (https://vimeo.com/863846656?share=copy)
Play & Co A strategic design agency based in Australia and the USA, that helps organisations design products with a sustainability focus.	Play & Co (https://vimeo.com/863863347?share=copy)
Closing the Loop Dutch company offering a closed loop mobile phone service. They aim to reduce electronic waste (e-waste) by offering users and sellers of phones a way to make their devices material-neutral and waste-free. The company pays people in emerging markets to collect scrap phones. These phones are then recycled on a ‘one for one’ basis where a customer’s phone is ‘offset’ by recycling a broken phone.	Closing the Loop (https://vimeo.com/865425710?share=copy)
Fairphone Dutch electronics manufacturer and social enterprise that designs and produces smartphones to have a lower environmental footprint and better social impact than is common in the industry.	Fairphone (https://vimeo.com/865429723?share=copy)
Inrego Swedish company that specialises in reusing and refurbishing computers and other IT equipment. The company buys used IT equipment, often in bulk, from companies and organisations, repairs and refurbishes it, and then resells it to its customers.	Inrego (https://vimeo.com/865434003?share=copy)
Schneider Electric A global organisation that develops connected technologies and solutions to manage energy and processes in safe, reliable, efficient and sustainable ways.	Schneider Electric (https://vimeo.com/863844675?share=copy)
Circonomy Originally founded as the World’s Biggest Garage Sale (WBGS) in 2013, Circonomy is an Australian organisation that offers a wide range of products across a variety of categories, including office furniture, renewed technology, and home furniture, by refurbishing, repairing, repurposing, reselling and recycling dormant goods.	Circonomy (https://vimeo.com/865422190?share=copy)
Green Planet Sport An Australian organisation supporting sports to become regenerative and building partnerships that have climate-positive outcomes for the health of people and the planet.	Green Planet Sport (vimeo.com/865431918/aef12889b3?share=copy)

If you are looking for more organisations for the case studies all videos and interviews for this unit are available on Vimeo for you to explore and use. If you have a particular topic in mind that you want expert insight on, we have categorised these interviews to make whatever you’re looking for easy to find.

Step 3.

Give students 10-15 minutes to conduct their research, and in their groups, ask students to identify:

What is the company?
Which of the Rs are being used by this company? (There may be more than one!)
How are they using these Rs?
How is the company contributing to the solving of the e-waste issue?
How does this company consider the environmental and societal impacts of e-waste?

Step 4.

Provide students with the opportunity to present their research to the class. Invite each group to put together a one-minute highlight reel to present their findings to the class, focusing on the questions above. The goal of this sharing of knowledge is to show how e-waste is not simply an issue to be solved through recycling but can be tackled in numerous ways by everyone involved in the life cycle of an e-product.

Take Action: What can we do?

Step 1.

Explain to students that to have an impact on the e-waste issue themselves, we need to look closer to home. Have students choose 1 e-product from the list below and explore the options for managing its end of life in their local government area:

Mobile phone
Headphones
Laptop
Charging cable
Monitor
Router
Gaming console
Game controller
Keyboard
Speakers

Students may find out information about the local council’s requirements for disposing of the item, investigate recycling schemes like The Reconnect Project (https://thereconnectproject.com.au/), or Mobile Muster (https://www.mobilemuster.com.au/), or they might find out that the supplier of the product has an end-of-life return scheme for recycling. Planet Ark has a Recycling Near You page on their website, allowing you to discover how and where to recycle certain items!

Reflection

Ask students to answer the following question on the student worksheet.

1. Should we introduce a law requiring companies to manage the end of life of their products? Why/why not?

You could have them complete this question as an exit ticket.

Electronic Product Lifecycle: Consumption and Disposal

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Electronic Product Lifecycle: Consumption and Disposal

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