Myths about teaching can hold you back
- Year 8
The environmental impact of materials
I can identify the environmental impact that materials have during a product's life cycle.
- Year 8
The environmental impact of materials
I can identify the environmental impact that materials have during a product's life cycle.
These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.
Switch to our new teaching resources now - designed by teachers and leading subject experts, and tested in classrooms.
These resources were created for remote use during the pandemic and are not designed for classroom teaching.
Lesson details
Key learning points
- A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) checks a product’s impact from start to finish.
- The carbon footprint rises with energy and resources used in manufacture, use and disposal.
- Recycling, reuse, or upcycling reduce the carbon footprint in an LCA.
- Designers use the LCA to find ways to cut emissions and improve efficiency.
Keywords
LCA - life cycle assessment; assesses the environmental impact at every stage of a product’s life
Carbon footprint - total amount of greenhouse gases a product or activity produces
Environment - the natural world
Common misconception
The environmental impact of a material only happens when the product is thrown away.
A material’s environmental impact occurs at every stage of its life cycle; during manufacture, use and disposal.
To help you plan your year 8 design and technology lesson on: The environmental impact of materials, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your year 8 design and technology lesson on: The environmental impact of materials, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom. Plus, you can set it as homework or revision for pupils and keep their learning on track by sharing an online pupil version of this lesson.
Explore more key stage 3 design and technology lessons from the Material testing unit, dive into the full secondary design and technology curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.
Equipment
Licence
Lesson video
Loading...
