Urban Environmental Quality and Human Health: Conceiving a Sustainable Future

CONTENTS OF CURRICULUM UNIT 08.07.06

  1. Unit Guide
  1. Objectives
  2. Introduction
  3. Family History
  4. Conception
  5. Birth: the primordial ooze to the chemistry of bottle life
  6. Adolescence: or the formation of the physical character of the bottle 10
  7. Adulthood: Or the working life of a bottle
  8. Seniority: or the many reasons not to reuse a bottle
  9. Death and Afterlife: Recycling?
  10. Resources
  11. Appendix: New Haven Science Standards
  12. End Notes

Life Cycle Analysis of an Ordinary Plastic Water Bottle

Jennifer B. Esty

Published September 2008

Tools for this Unit:

Introduction

This unit will begin with an exercise to show where the unit is going. Specifically, the introductory exercise will show the students the cyclical nature of a life cycle so the students will be able to see how the beginning of the process becomes important at the end and, in fact, can become the next stage of the cycle after the end. In this exercise, they will explore the stages of a generic life cycle by looking at how they perceive the stages of life they see in the world around them. When I teach this part of the unit, I will probably use a graphic organizer which will have a circle divided into wedges. The girls will label each wedge with a difference stage of life. The girls will be asked to think about and write down what they want for their children at the particular stage in their children's lives. Then, using the same organizer, we will look at how each stage might be applied to the life of a bottle and the girls will be asked to write down what they think is happening to the bottle at each stage of the bottle's life. This exercise could easily be modified for non-pregnant students by asking what they have experienced and hope to experience in the various stages of life.

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