Science fair: What happens to plastic, paper and ‘compostable’ packaging over eight weeks? (ages 10–16)
An eight-week degradation trial in soil, water, sunlight and dark, with a photo log and an honest discussion of the ‘450 years’ myth.
Resources for schools and families
Lesson plans, audits, experiments, conversation cards and vetted external resources by age.
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Science fair: How many fibres come off our clothes in a wash? (ages 11–16)
A two-session experiment capturing laundry microfibres on filter paper and comparing fabrics or wash settings.
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Science fair: Which shopping bag is strongest per gram? (ages 10–16)
A fair-test experiment comparing failure load and load-per-gram for five bag types, linked to published reuse break-even data.
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Family plastic footprint calculator: how it works and the weights we use
The full method, per-item weights and country benchmarks behind our calculator, so families and classes can check every number.
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Classroom plastic audit (ages 8–18, with a picture tally for 5–7)
A one-week, 12-category count of a class’s single-use plastic with a published weights table, the sums, and a three-swap action plan.
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Lesson plan: Does a bag for life actually help? Life-cycle assessment with real data (ages 15–18)
A 60-minute lesson that uses published life-cycle assessment (LCA) data to work out how many times a reusable bag must be used, and weighs…
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Lesson plan: Why is only 9% recycled? (ages 12–14)
A 60-minute chemistry lesson on plastic as a limited resource, resin codes, real recycling data and designing a school monitoring method.
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Lesson plan: The lunchbox investigation (ages 8–11)
A 45-minute lesson that counts a class’s lunchbox plastic, turns it into grams a year, and ends with three evidence-based swaps.
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Lesson plan: What is plastic, and where does it belong? (ages 5–7)
A 45-minute everyday-materials lesson: sort, test and decide what we use once and what we use again and again.
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Our World in Data: Plastic Pollution topic page and data explorer
Free, citable charts (CC BY 4.0) on plastic production, waste, recycling and ocean inputs, ideal for 12–18 data lessons.