BIN RAIDER - Key Stage 2

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. However, a working knowledge of the subject would be useful to understand some of the more difficult scientific principles and would ensure a deeper understanding of the fundamental issues involved.

The play is set on Earth where the wastage of energy and resources has escalated to the point that far away in another part of the Universe the ‘Eco-Friendly Federation of Planets’ is worried. Bin Raider, an interplanetary troubleshooter, is sent from the planet Spotless to find out what is going wrong and to educate the profligate Earthlings.

‘REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE’

Bin Raider lands on Earth in a school playground. The school is a microcosm of the global problems of the Earth: the head is trying to gain ‘Eco Status’ for the school but no one is taking any responsibility for recycling waste, cutting car journeys or saving energy. The head has become so frustrated he’s almost given up!

On landing Bin meets the Earthling schoolgirl Courtney and introduces her to the idea: REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE. The audience learns actions appropriate for each word and uses them throughout the play.

Bin Raider explains that we all need to reduce the amount we throw away, and in order to do this we must either reuse our waste or recycle it; for example don’t use a different bag every time you go to the supermarket, reuse one of your own instead and if you have to throw something away try to recycle it rather than sending it to landfill.

With the help of the audience Bin Raider then goes through a binliner of rubbish to see how much can be either reused or recycled. The waste is sorted by the audience into reusable and recyclable materials, including an apple core as green recyclable waste, and the amount left to throw away is reduced to almost zero.

Bin and Courtney then sing this 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

Reduce, reuse, recycle please

And see your waste decrease

However, Courtney concludes that ‘there’s no point in doing any of this unless everybody does it.’ And this is a running theme throughout the play until the final scene when we finally see that each of us is responsible regardless of others’ actions.

In the classroom. An interesting follow-up project might be for the children to monitor the waste they themselves create in one week. Chart the items, listing them under the headings ‘reusable items’ ‘recycling’ ‘compost’ and ‘landfill’. Other follow-up work could include a discussion on the reasons for re-cycling and the subject of limited world resources could be raised. You can also discuss what is happening to our rubbish now, and the problem of landfill sites: e.g. the waste from London alone being buried in 7 different counties around the city, the shortage of new areas for sites and the problem of rotting waste which pollutes the ground around it.

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 stopping people like him, who really need the car, from being able to use them. Unfortunately, he lets slip he only lives around the corner; he should be walking to school as well!

Thus we return to the theme of taking responsibility: the parents have tried to set up a walking bus but failed, cycling proficiency classes were mooted but the paperwork was too much to get them off the ground and Mr Watson has given up on persuading the parents to give up their cars.

In the classroom: Try to encourage pupils to think about different ways to get to and from school each day. Discuss how walking or cycling to school 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’. He tells us to turn off our computer monitors when we’re not using them, switch off mobile phone rechargers, don’t leave televisions on standby, buy energy efficient lightbulbs and don’t leave your fridge open.

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 switch it off, be green like me

And you’ll save energy

And Courtney and Bin reprise with:

Go clean, go green, you know what I mean

Stop. Think ‘green’ then change your routine

Take good care to shut the fridge

Turn your heating down a smidge

It’s not really rocket science

Just press the switch on your appliance.

So switch it off, be green like me

And you’ll save energy

In the classroom: the children can compile two lists, one of classroom appliances and the other of electrical appliances and items they use at home which, if switched off, will save energy. Set the children a task to monitor all the appliances they have listed at school and at home that can be switched off after use. The child should check them each morning for a week to see if they have been turned off the night before.

Ask the children to bring in an electric bill and work out how much money they would save per household if they turned their heating down one degree (10% of the bill). Calculate how much the whole class would save per quarter.

The children can each investigate whether they have low energy lightbulbs at home, whether they have double glazing and if they have loft insulation. Is there anything else they could do do their homes to save energy?

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

THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT

With the help of members of the audience we discover how the Greenhouse effect comes about.

The sun's rays pass through the Earth's atmosphere, heat the Earth and are then reflected back out into space. But some rays are absorbed by clouds of water vapour and "Greenhouse gases" - Carbon Monoxide, Carbon Dioxide, CFCs, Methane, Ozone etc. As well as being absorbed by the clouds of gases the rays are also reflected back to the Earth and continue to be reflected back and forth heating the Earth. The sun’s rays are unable to escape and heat the Earth in much the same way as in a greenhouse - the Greenhouse effect.

Of course we need a certain number of these gases to keep the Earth at a warm enough temperature for life and the Earth has its own inbuilt natural balance. However, our hero realizes that if we keep creating more and more gases then the delicate natural balance of the atmosphere will be upset and more heat than normal will be held in the Earth with devastating consequences.

In the classroom. The principle of the greenhouse effect is quite a complicated one so in class the description in the play could be followed up in more detail. You could also explore the possible consequences of the Earth heating up. What would happen if more clouds of greenhouse gases appear over the Earth? What seems to be happening to the polar ice-caps? And what are the ramifications on low lying countries such as The Netherlands?

The play concludes with the human race being put on trial for its irresponsible actions with regard to the Earth’s resources. With the help of the children Courtney and the Head Teacher the judges of the Friendly Federation are finally 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 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.

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, either seated or on the floor. The show works well ‘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 one hour.