Students will follow the engineering design process to design and create solutions to plastic packaging problems. They will create and adapt suitable and sustainable designs that will consider alternatives to plastic packaging for example juice boxes, plastic straws, straw wrappers, bin liners, and single-use containers.

After a brief history of plastics, students look more closely as some examples from the abundant types of plastics found in our day-to-day lives. They are introduced to the mechanical properties of plastics, including their stress-strain relationships, which determine their suitability for different industrial and product applications. These physical properties enable plastics to be fabricated into a wide range of products. Students learn about the different roles that plastics play in our lives, Young's modulus, and the effects that plastics have on our environment. Then students act as industrial engineers, conducting tests to compare different plastics and performing a cost-benefit analysis to determine which are the most cost-effective for a given application, based on their costs and measured physical properties.

In this lesson, students view images of plastic pollution around the world, watch a video on plastic pollution, and analyze artwork about plastic pollution.

Step 1 - Inquire: Students complete a KWL on plastic pollution and view six images of plastic pollution around the world.

Step 2 - Investigate: Students watch a video on plastic pollution and discuss.

Step 3 - Inspire: Students analyze artwork with a partner and then choose one artwork to analyze using the art critique star.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Every year, over 9 million metric tons of plastic waste enter the ocean and can harm its ecosystems. When it comes to marine microbes, most of the current research has focused on those that directly colonize the plastic particles. But plastic also leaches chemical additives into the water, which could impact planktonic microbes as well. So, researchers tested the impact of leachate from polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a common plastic, and zinc, a plastic additive, on a natural planktonic community. Some microorganisms, including both bacteria and eukaryotes, were impaired by exposure to plastic leachates. Photosynthetic microorganisms, the base of the food web, were particularly strongly affected, showing declines in photosynthetic efficiency, diversity, and abundance. Other important and normally highly abundant bacterial groups were also negatively impacted. In contrast, microorganisms that thrive in nutrient-rich environments, copiotrophs, dramatically increased in relative abundance..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Plastics are very useful for the people and also it is equally hazardous

Part one in the series Paradise under Pressure/ Paradis under pres: https://paradis-under-pres.simplecast.com/

Plastic bottles are impossible to avoid when travelling for vacation to southern countries. In Zanzibar, thousands of plastic bottles are sailed in from the mainland every day. They float as waste everywhere on beaches, streets, and in between bushes, trees and tall grass.
In this episode, we will meet Aziza Biubwa of the State University of Zanzibar, a researcher in waste management, Justin Madho, who works for the waste company Zanrec and Sjani Müggenburg, director of Ozti East Africa - a company that has made furniture plastic screw cap.

Danish:
Plastikflasker er umulige at undgå, når du holder ferie i syden. På Zanzibar bliver tusindvis af plastikflasker hver dag sejlet ind fra fastlandet, men som affald flyder de overalt på strande, gader, og imellem buske, træer og højt græs.
I denne episode skal vi møde Aziza Biubwa fra State University of Zanzibar, som forsker i affaldshåndtering, Justin Madho, som arbejder for affaldsfirmaet Zanrec og Sjani Müggenburg, som er direktør for Ozti East Africa – et firma der har fundet ud af at lave møbler af plastikskruelåg.

Students are introduced to the growing worldwide environmental problems that stem from plastic waste. What they learn about microplastics and the typical components of the U.S. water treatment process prepares them to conduct three engaging associated activities. During the lesson, students become more aware of the pervasiveness and value of plastic as well as the downstream pollution and health dangers. They learn how plastic materials don’t go away, but become microplastic pollution that accumulates in water resources as well as human and other animal bodies. They examine their own plastic use, focusing on what they discard daily, and think about better ways to produce or package those items to eliminate or reduce their likelihood of ending up as microplastic pollution. A concluding writing assignment reveals their depth of comprehension. The lesson is enhanced by arranging for a local water treatment plant representative to visit the class for Qs and As. In three associated activities, students design/test microplastic particle filtering methods for commercial products, create mini wastewater treatment plant working models that remove waste and reclaim resources from simulated wastewater, and design experiments to identify the impact of microplastics on micro-invertebrates.

Students learn that engineers develop different polymers to serve various functions and are introduced to selectively permeable membranes. In a warm-up activity, they construct models of selectively permeable membranes using common household materials, and are reminded about simple diffusion and passive transport. In the main activity, student pairs test and compare the selective permeability of everyday polymer materials engineered for food storage (including plastic grocery bags, zipper sandwich bags, and plastic wrap) with various in-solution molecules (iodine, corn starch, food coloring, marker dye), assess how the polymer’s permeability relates to its function/purpose, and compare that to the permeability of dialysis tubing (which simulates a cell membrane).

This is an example of one teams project based learning process. The team tested several recyclable materials to find out which ones have the best insulating properties. Check out their research!

Student teams investigate the migration of small-particle plastic pollution by exposing invertebrates found in water samples from a local lake or river to fluorescent bead fragments in a controlled environment of their own designs. Students begin by reviewing the composition of food webs and considering the ethics of studies on live organisms. In their model microcosms, they set up a food web so as to trace the microbead migration from one invertebrate species to another. Students use blacklights and microscopes to observe and quantify their experimental results. They develop diagrams that explain their investigations—modeling the ecological impacts of microplastics.

Through an adult-led field trip, students organized into investigation teams catalogue the incidence of plastic debris in different environments. They investigate these plastics according to their type, age, location and other characteristics that might indicate what potential they have for becoming part of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). Students collect qualitative and quantitative data that may be used to create a Google Earth layer as part of a separate activity that can be completed at a computer lab at school or as homework. The activity is designed as a step on the way to student's creation of their own GIS Google Earth layer. It is, however, possible for the field trip to be a useful learning experience unto itself that does not require this last GIS step.

In a student-led and fairly independent fashion, data collected in the associated field trip activity are organized by student groups to create useful and informative Google Earth maps. Each team creates a map, uses that map to analyze the results, adjusts the map to include the analysis results, and then writes a brief summary of findings. Primarily, questions of fate-and-transport of plastics are are explored. If data was gathered in the field trip but the teacher does not desire to do the mapping activity, then alternative data presentation and analysis methods are suggested.

Just because you can̢ĺŰĺŞt see it doesn̢ĺŰĺŞt mean it isn̢ĺŰĺŞt there. Whether it sinks or floats, plastics in the sea spell trouble for all the animals in the ocean. By matching animal cards to plastic risks, students find out the many ways marine life can be affected by plastics in their aquatic home.