Foreword

PETCO is the trading name of the PET Recycling Company NPC South Africa, a not-for-profit company incorporated in 2004. PETCO fulfils the PET industry’s role of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), being a voluntary industry driven and financed environmental solution for post-consumer PET plastic and the vehicle through which the PET industry self-regulates and co-ordinates its recycling activities. To achieve this, everyone involved, from Government to the raw material producers, converters, brand owners, retailers, consumers, and recyclers, play their part in the solution. By imposing accountability over the entire life cycle of PET products and packaging, companies that manufacture, import and/or sell PET products and packaging are financially and physically responsible for such products after their useful life.

PETCO is not involved in the physical collection or recycling of waste PET in South Africa, choosing to remain outside of the PET recycling value chain. Instead, it acts as a Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO) that financially supports, on behalf of its members, activities along the waste PET value chain. This model presents the lowest risk to all stakeholders, negates the need for PET EPR funding becoming a drain on the national fiscus, and is the most cost-efficient solution for society. PETCO members include brand owners, resin producers, converters, and bottlers. Visit www.petco.co.za for more information.

PETCO has created this user-friendly, fun, and factual Educators’ Workbook to help teach learners how their actions can have a less harmful impact on the environment. They will learn that littering is a bad habit, as well as the different things that can be done with waste. By completing the activities together with your learners, you will teach them lessons that they will remember for life. The activities, which are aligned to the CAPS curriculum, cover the Life Skills curriculum standards and have been designed to ensure that learners have fun while learning.

You can assist your learners by encouraging them not to litter, and to:

• reduce waste;
• reuse materials; and
• collect materials that can be recycled.

The primary learning areas covered in this guide are:

Grade 4: Life Skills Term 4 (Health and environmental responsibility); English Term 1 (Reading and Viewing).
Grade 5: Natural Sciences and Technology Term 2 (Matter and Materials; Processing); English First Additional Language Term 3 (Reading and Viewing); Life Skills Term 3 (Health and environmental responsibility).
Grade 6: Mathematics (Data Handling); English (Writing and Presenting).

Many of the activities in this guide are based on the poster (‘People in the life of a recycled plastic bottle’):

1. Consumers
2. Collectors
3. Recyclers
4. Convertors
5. Bottlers/Fillers
6. Brand Owners
7. Retailers

While some activities relate to the poster as a whole, others focus on one or two of the people and/or related processes (e.g. ‘recycling’). Ensure that your learners have a full overview of the cycle before doing the individual activities. It may also be helpful for you to read the whole Teacher Guide, in preparation, as different processes are explained in detail in various sections of the guide. A vocabulary table is provided in the Resource Section which defines words that are frequently used in this guide. You may wish to make a copy of the table for your learners.

The poster and activities are aimed at teaching learners the 4R’s that will help them to make wiser choices about managing the amount of waste that they create and to become aware of the need to protect their local environments, as well as planet Earth as a whole.

Learn more by downloading the Educating future leaders by teaching them to care for the environment – Educator Workbook Grade 4 workbook PDF below: