Teacher Preparation

Make some time for your students to read the section on ‘Bottled Water’ (under ‘Water’, Years 3 and 4) in the Student Toolbox.

Activity

Question and answer sheet

The purpose of this part of the activity is to visualise the scale of the bottled water industry and the amount of resources required to supply it to shops.

Ask students to complete the question sheet. If they have not used the information above they will need to guess all the answers.

As a class look at the answers and discuss the amount of resources that go into supplying bottled water.

What do we need to know about drinking water?

These are the basic facts we need to know about the sources of drinking water in Australia:

Having many drinks of water during the day is good for our health.
In most places in Australia the water from the tap is clean and safe to drink.
The water in bottled water is no cleaner than tap water in most places in Australia.
Students have found out from the question sheet that to produce bottled water requires a lot of resources.
We can use reusable drink bottles instead of buying water.
At home we can use a glass or a cup to drink tap water.
If we share drink containers with other people we are sharing the germs from our mouth as well.

How does this information help students make decisions? What decisions do they need to make?

How much water do they need to drink to stay healthy?
Where do they get their water?
Will they share drink containers?

Extension activities

Ask your students to consider one of the following activities:

• Design a poster to encourage people to drink water from a cup or glass instead of a plastic water bottle.

• Design a poster to campaign for a plastic water bottle free school.

• Get together with some classmates and write a play about not buying water in plastic bottles.

• Write a song, story, poem or essay on how to help encourage people to stop buying bottled water.

Bottling questions answers

Answers in RED.

Undertake your own research to find the answers under the heading water in theStudent Toolbox.

1. All together, how much does Australia spend on bottled water in a year? (Select one)

a. $2.50

b. Over $500 million (could buy land and build more than a 1,000 houses)

c. $300 million

d. $750,000

2. How many tonnes of greenhouse gas is released to produce bottled water in for a Australia year? (Select one)

a. 300 million

b. 60,000 (the gas weighs as much about 50,000 cars)

c. 25,000

d. 100

3. How many barrels of oil does this require? (160 litres in a barrel of oil) (Select one)

a. 300 million

b. 100

c. 60,000

d. 460,000 (This could drive one car 2,000,000,000 kilometres or enough fuel to fill 100,000 cars for a year.)

4. According to the Cool Australia website, what percentage of these bottles end up getting recycled? (Select one)

a. 5%

b. 40% (4 out of 10)

c. 50%

d. 60%

5. The water for these bottles doesn’t come out of peaceful rivers and bubbling mountain brooks. Instead, it’s mostly bore water sucked out of the ground.

6. Can you draw your own a comic strip showing the stages that are need to produce bottled water? Use a separate piece of paper and start with the factory that makes and fills the bottles, the bottles being moved to the shop, an individual buying a bottle of water, and then the bottle going to a recycling depot and hopefully not a rubbish dump. Are there any other stages you could include in your cartoon?

Answers will vary according to students' interpretations and understandings of the issue.

Cool Questions and Activities About Bottled Water

Go to

Summary

Learning intentions:

Students will...

Lesson guides and printables

Lesson Details

Curriculum Mapping

Resources Required

Additional Info

In this lesson