Foreword

PETCO is the trading name of the PET Recycling Company NPC South Africa, a not-for-profit company incorporated in 2004. PETCO started as a voluntary, industry-driven and financed environmental solution for post-consumer Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) plastic. Initially, PETCO represented the plastic industry’s effort to self-regulate the recycling of post-consumer PET. Today, it has a broader mandate. Recycling – separating, collecting, and remanufacturing or converting used or waste products into new materials – offering several environmental, economic and social advantages. To achieve this, producers pay a mandatory EPR fee to PETCO for the packaging that they place on the South African market. By imposing accountability on producers as per the South Africa legislation, brand owners, retailers and importers are financially and physically responsible for the products they place on the market 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 value chain. This model presents the lowest risk to all stakeholders, negates the need for EPR funding becoming a drain on the national fiscus, and is the most cost-efficient solution for society.

PETCO has created this user-friendly, fun, and factual Educators’ Workbook to help teach learners, in Grade 7, how to take responsibility for their environment and to mobilise others to do the same. The workbook contains a story, Lesedi’s Recycling Business Journey, about a Grade 7 learner who decides to start a plastic recycling business to support her wants and her family’s needs. The three worksheets use Lesedi’s story as a springboard to explore the
following themes:

Learner Activity 1: The importance of looking after the environment in such a way that we balance humans’ unlimited needs and wants with the fact that the Earth has limited resources.

Learner Activity 2: The importance of recycling and understanding why recycling benefits both the environment, by reducing pollution, and the economy, by keeping resources circulating, rather than wasting them.

Learner Activity 3: Characteristics of entrepreneurs, how waste can be a source of income, and ways that entrepreneurs can market and advertise their businesses.

The workbook is also accompanied by a poster which encourages learners to reduce, reuse and recycle and suggests practical ways in which they can do so.

The activities, in this workbook, are all aligned with the Economic & Management Sciences (EMS) CAPS curriculum for Grade 7. By completing the activities together with your learners, you will teach them lessons that they will remember for life. A vocabulary table is also provided which defines words that are frequently used in this guide. You may wish to make a copy of the table for your learners.

Learn more by downloading the Educating future leaders by teaching them to care for the environment – Educator Workbook Grade 7 PDF below: