Resource 1: Our Rocks and Minerals

International Studies S1 Sustainable Development Resource 1: Our rocks and minerals

The 1 billion people living in the economically more developed countries (EMDCs) live at a much higher lifestyle than the other 6 billion who mostly live in ELDCs. This lifestyle involves buying many things, eating lots of food and using up huge amounts of fuel, through our electricity, heating and travel. We live in a consumer society. This means we spend a lot of money on buying things that we think will improve our life. We tend to attach a lot of value to things and “stuff”. Consumer societies tend to rely heavily on new technology and we are encouraged to get new things, eg the latest fashions, the newest phone, the most recent gadgets. With this, comes a lot of waste, because we throw so much away. So the more stuff we have, the more we throw away. If we only bought things we needed, there would be enough for everybody. What do we need? What you need depends on how old you are and your way of life. Task 1 Tick the correct column, to give each item a score from 1 (not important) to 5 (essential)

 1 2 3 4 5  A pair of trainers  A dental check-up  Water  I-pad  A pair of jeans  Paper smart phone  Pain killer  Annual holiday  Food  A restaurant meal  jeans  A coat  Toothpast e  chocolate Task 2 (a) How many essential items did you select?

(b) How many items did you not think were so important?

(c) Compare your findings with a friend Extension: Fast Fashion and the “Throw Away” Society

Task 3 To think about a) How long on average do people keep their mobile phone before changing it?

b) What happens to old mobile phones?

There is a strong connection between high resource consumption and waste. This is often because we make more things than we need, or the kinds of activities we do to make things don’t make good use of resources. But a major reason is that we have grown used to living in a “throw away society”. We don’t keep items for long; we want the next make, the latest model, even if we have perfectly good model.

Task 4 Read this newspaper article. It is about how “fast fashion” is making us a throwaway society. Then answer the questions. Vocabulary: Textiles-clothing, towels, rags, Landfill-burying waste underground instead of burning it, recycling it, etc “In an age of “fast fashion”, 1.5 million tons of clothes and textiles go straight into landfill sites in Britain every year. Oxfam said that 9,513 garments were thrown into landfill every five minutes, totalling one billion items per year and the equivalent of one in four garments sold. While every other type of landfill waste is reducing, textiles has risen. The Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap), a Government agency in charge of reducing waste, said 1/3 of councils had now introduced collections for textile recycling, up from a handful a decade ago. The trend has been dubbed the “Primark effect”; however it is not just cheap clothes that are being discarded. Charity shops are receiving designer brands and good quality high street labels that have hardly been worn. Recent donations to the Trinity Hospice in Victoria, London, have included Versace and Dolce and Gabanna. Wrap has started to encourage more councils to collect textiles for recycling. About 60 per cent of clothing sent for recycling is sold to other countries for reuse, mostly Africa and Eastern Europe, while 35 per cent is reused as mattress stuffing or insulation.

(a) What is “fast fashion”?

(b) What evidence is there that is “not just cheap clothes that are being thrown out”? (c) How many separate items of clothes are being chucked into landfill sites each year?

(d) What better options are there?

(e) Find Out

a. Remember we have ragbag bin at Boleyn Road. How much do we collect each month?

b. When did you last use the ragbag bin, or take clothes to a charity shop?