Bin Raider - Key Stage 1

INTRODUCTION

"Bin Raider" explores citizenship and how to take personal responsibility for our environment, highlighting the everyday actions we all can take to reduce energy wastage and what is thrown away.

With no prior knowledge of the subject the play should serve as a springboard from which to approach the issues and provide good discussion topics for future work in the classroom. If you have been working on the subject in class the play will act as a reinforcement of issues covered and will help to underline the message of personal responsibility.

WASTE CREATED BY MAN

The play is set on Earth where humans are wasting energy and throwing everything away. Bin Raider, an interplanetary troubleshooter, is sent from the planet Spotless to find out what is going wrong and to educate the profligate Earthlings.

Bin Raider immediately enlists the help of the audience and the children are given the response: "Reduce, Re-use, Recycle" which they are asked to call out if they see any character drop litter.

Bin Raider meets Courtney, an Earthling, and together they show the audience how much waste is thrown away per person per year: a member of the audience is loaded up with rubbish - 2 trees worth of paper, 70 drinks cans, 90 food cans, 107 glass bottles and jars and 40kg of plastic. Bin Raider reiterates that instead of throwing these things away we must ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ and sings a song:

Go clean, go green, you know what I mean

Stop. Think ‘green’ and change your routine

Reduce the waste you’re throwing away

Reuse stuff another day

Everybody can recycle

Use your box. Don’t take the Michael

So stop, think ‘green’ and change your routine

And see your waste decrease

In the classroom: discuss why Bin Raider wants us all to ‘Think Green’. What does he mean by that phrase and why does he chose the colour green to illustrate his point?

An interesting follow-up project might be for the children to monitor the waste they themselves create in one school day. This would include the rubbish left over from packed lunches and any paper thrown away in class etc. Chart the items, listing them under the headings ‘reuse’, ‘recycle’ ‘compost’ and ‘bin’.

As infants rarely have any idea what happens to all the rubbish they throw in the bin other follow-up work could include a discussion on the reasons for re-cycling and an explanation of what is happening to our rubbish now. They could follow the journey of their bin liners from wheelie bin to dust cart to landfill. (the waste from London alone being buried in 7 different counties around the city)

The children could set up their own class experiment: bury one piece of waste that is slow to biodegrade and one piece of ‘green’ waste. Revisit both items 3 months later to see what has happened. This will demonstrate only too clearly why non-biodegradable waste should be recycled!

WASTE FACTS

· 72% of municipal waste is landfilled, 9% is incinerated (this is also called energy from waste)

· We currently recyle and compost between 19% and 23% of our rubbish.

· On average each person in the UK throws away 7 times their body weight (about 500kg) in rubbish every year.

· On average every family in the UK comsumes around 330 glass bottles and jars a year.

· Every year an estimated 17½ billion plastic bags are given away by supermarkets. This is equivalent to over 290 bags for every person in the UK.

· We produce and use around 20 times more plastic today than we did 50 years ago.

· Paper and card makes up around 1/5 of the contents of our dustbins. That’s the equivalent of over 4kg of waste paper per household per week,

· Each UK home uses an average of 600 cans a year.

CUTTING CAR JOURNEYS

The Head Teacher, Mr Watson, is late to school again. The traffic is terrible and he can’t get to school on time. He enters and sings a song berating the parents for driving to school and clogging up the roads.

We return to the theme of taking personal responsibility: Mr Watson has given up on persuading the parents to leave their cars at home and can’t see why if they continue to use the car he shouldn’t.

In the classroom: Try to encourage pupils to think about different ways to get to and from school each day. Discuss how walking would be beneficial for both the children’s health and for their local environment.

You may want to have an ‘Environment Week’ to get pupils and parents reflecting on how they can cut carbon emissions by changing their daily transport plans.

CAR JOURNEY FACTS

· Between 30% and 40% of car journeys made by the average UK household are less than 2 miles long.

· Cars are at their least efficient at the start of a journey with the effectiveness of catalytic converters only really kicking in after the first three miles or so of a drive. As a result, the first mile of your journey can produce as much as 60% more fumes than normal.

· 7% of the average annual carbon footprint for a UK citizen is produced by simply getting to work and back each day.

· The daily commute is responsible for pumping 0.8 tons of carbon into the atmosphere per person per year, with a large proportion of this coming from car journeys.

· Ditching the car just one day per week would save over 140kg of carbon per year and reduce the number of cars on the road in rush-hour by up to 20% on an average day.

STOP THAT ENERGY LEAK

Bin Raider and Courtney hide form the Head Teacher in the ICT suite, the big red patch on Bin’s ‘Energy Wasting Detector’ . Energy is pouring from every appliance and Bin teaches us all to ‘switch off’. Bin asks the children how we can save electricity. What should we turn off after we’ve finished watching it? What about when you leave a room? And how about when you’ve finished playing computer games? (Bin underlines the fact that children should never unplug things, just use the switch) And what about when we clean our teeth, what should we not leave running? So there are lots of ways we can save energy and Bin concludes that ‘You just need to be more switched on, and then you’ll switch things off!

’

To the same tune as before Bin sings:

Go clean, go green, you know what I mean

Stop. Think ‘green’ then change your routine

Switch it off. I guarantee

You’ll be saving energy

And that mobile phone recharger there

Is leaking power into the air

So stop and think go green and change your routine

And you’ll save energy

In the classroom: make a chart for each child in the class and see who remembers to turn off any appliances. Anyone who remembers to turn off the class smart board, lights at playtime, the computer monitor etc. can have a star for their table. See which table wins at the end of each week.

ENERGY FACTS

· Almost half of the UK's carbon dioxide emissions come from energy we use every day - at home and when we travel.

· For every minute the fridge door is left open it takes 3 minutes to regain temperature

· Turning down your central heating thermostat by just one degree saves energy and reduces your fuel bills by up to 10%

· If every household in the UK installed 3 low energy light bulbs enough energy would be saved in a year to supply all the street lighting in the UK

· If you only switch off the monitor screen of your PC– this alone will saves 70-80% of the PCs energy use

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE

Poor Mr Watson, the head teacher, has given up on the rubbish in his school. The bicycle sheds are just one big rubbish bin and he’s at his wits end as to how to dispose of the mess. Biggins, the school caretaker, is running out of places to put the stuff! Mr Watson, in desperation, decides to load all the rubbish on Bin Raider’s spaceship and send it off into outerspace. He thinks this will solve the waste problem. Biggins points out that the plan does nothing to solve the energy leakage and that the rubbish will just pile up again unless people change their ways but Mr Watson is not listening…

Bin Raider decides to sort through the rubbish in the bicycle sheds. He explains that humans need to reduce the amount they throw away, and in order to do this we must all reuse things or recycle. Bin then gets a bin full or rubbish and together with the audience they take out all the items that can be reused or recycled. Bin suggests different ways to reuse waste, like taking unwanted items to the charity shop, reusing glass jars and even by giving old cardboard boxes and plastic pots to nursery schools for junk modeling! And even ‘green’ waste can be used to make compost for the garden.

Bin sings his song once more and the audience joins in.

CONCLUSION

In the final scene we see that it is each and every one of us that is responsible for the Earth’s problems. The human race is being put on trial for its irresponsible actions with regard to the Earth’s resources but with the help of the children, Courtney and the Head Teacher the judges from outer space are persuaded that we have all learned our lesson and will each take personal responsibility for saving energy and resources by illustrating what small changes we can do to make a difference.

AT THE END OF THE PLAY

At the end of the play the actors will hold a short (5-10 minutes) question and answer session with the children which relates to the information and issues discussed in the play. The audience is then invited to ask any other questions they may have regarding any aspect of the production.

DISCUSSION TOPICS

33% of the world uses 83% of the world's resources. Discuss what resources are finite and how our lives would change if they ran out in our lifetime.

Consider the packaging around our food in an average packed lunch: each item is often individually wrapped, our drinks are in separate packages, and any left overs we usually throw away. Many products are over packaged for purely cosmetic reasons.

By burying certain materials you can find out how quickly they will rot away, or indeed if they’ll rot at all. This knowledge can then be used to explain why we have a problem with the build up of rubbish.

Consider why Mr Watson’s plan would prove to be only a short-term solution to the rubbish problem. Discuss how we have to alter the way we live to prevent the production of too much waste. How can we cut down on packaging, and what can we use again?

Discuss how we can all reduce, reuse, recycle. You can discuss the use of milk bottles and how the milkman performs a useful service preventing the bottles from having to be remolded before they can be used again, and the function of jumble sales and second hand clothes shops in the recycling of cloth.

Show Requirements

The actors will be arriving approximately forty minutes prior to the start time in order to set up and will need to have access to the school hall from then. They bring the set, lighting and sound equipment with them so only need access to a plug socket. They’ll need a space approximately 15’ wide by 10’ deep with the children sitting in front, seated on the floor. The show works best ‘on the flat’ but if it’s more convenient for the actors to use your stage, please let them know on arrival. Bin Raider lasts fifty minutes with a ten minute Q & A after the show.