Valentine's Flowers

Year 8 are looking at the story lying behind the flowers which will be arriving in florists and supermarkets ahead of the 14th of February. I used this Google Form a while back to collect data on the places where people were buying flowers as it came to Valentine's Day. This is for a piece of work with Year 8 students.

The original toolkit book by Louise Ellis can be seen here in the GA shop.

Valentine's Roses

This week, Year 8 will be exploring the story of a Valentine's Rose, and the social, economic and environmental costs of its production. There will be many more flowers being produced and grown specifically to come to the peak of their condition in the week running up to the 14th of February, which this year falls on a Sunday. Normally at this time of year, Rose sales rise to their highest levels in the run up to the 14th of February because of the links between roses and romance.

I wonder what impacts the COVID-19 pandemic and the Brexit delays on imports of fresh goods, which would also include flowers might have on this year's trade?

We will be using a version of the resources written by Louise Ellis in her book written for the GA's KS3 Toolkit series, which can be purchased at a 15% discount currently from the GA Shop.

Planned obsolescence

Year 8s explore the 'Story of Stuff' and one of the themes in that programme is how manufacturing shifted towards a model where customers were sold products which were designed to last just long enough that they would be prepared to buy a replacement without complaining that it hadn't lasted very long.

This excellent piece in the Guardian starts with a quote from Nathan Proctor of the 'Right to Repair' campaign.


"Imagine you showed someone a smartphone 20 years ago. You said: ‘Here’s this thing, it’s going to be awesome, and it’ll cost $1,000. But the manufacturers are going to glue the battery in, and you’re supposed to get rid of it when the battery wears out.’ You would have thought that notion was completely bananas."

This sort of effort is now increasingly important, but will perhaps have stalled because of Coronavirus.

"Astonishingly, according to EU research, the average lifetime of desktop printers is a mere five hours and four minutes of actual printing time."

Moby Duck lesson update...

Flip flop story...

We found three of these Speed flipflops from the @Maersk Shanghai cargo spill off the coast of North Carolina in March 2018 washed up within a few metres of each other in Cornwall, UK yesterday. A journey of some 3,500 miles in 655 days.
And still side by side. Amazing, really. pic.twitter.com/OpUdJXX29Z

— Lego Lost At Sea (@LegoLostAtSea) December 18, 2019

Agbogbloshie: e-wasteland

Agbogbloshie is a suburb of the city of Accra on the Atlantic coast of Ghana in West Africa.

It is a well known example of a community which receives illegal shipments of e-waste, which provides employment for young men, often migrants from the north of Ghana. Cables are burned to melt the plastic revealing the copper wire.


Attempts are being made to stop the burning.

Pure Earth blog has more details on this.

In the most recent Geographical Journal from the RGS-IBG, there was an article on the places in the world where this activity takes place - it is not only Ghana, and in most cases there is a hierarchy of jobs which sustains other employment.

Source of image: https://www.voanews.com/a/wire-strippers-bring-some-relief-from-toxic-smokein-ghana/2498347.html 

Story Map: the life of a Battery

Child labour in the cobalt trade

Plastic in the Oceans

A useful film which has some errors in the animations if you want to be picky, but is designed for a school audience and tells its story engagingly...

Primark Suppliers Map

All ready for the start of our Year 8 unit on the Story of our Stuff...

Primark are a company that has some criticism in the past over their supply chain. Now they are trying to position themselves as a more ethical company, and provide more information about the factories where their products are made.

There is an improved focus on transparency in the supply chain, and this includes the production of a map (a tool that other suppliers have also done quite effectively).
The map now has a link through to suppliers.

Albatross stomachs and plastic - the images

A Plastic Ocean

Mr. Parkinson went to the offices of the exam board OCR yesterday, and saw a talk which was from Jo Luxton, who is involved in the making of the film: A Plastic Ocean.

This film has taken many years to produce, and involved filming around the world to uncover the truth of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other gyres.


Check out the website to find out more about the film.

Jo passed round a few jars, which contained a range of plastic items, all of which had come from the stomachs of baby albatrosses.

Chris Jordan's film 'Message from Midway' came out some time ago, and introduced this idea, along with his Hokusai wave made from plastic pieces, but this was a powerful experience to actually handle the plastic items and see the range of them for real, such as the inkjet cartridge shown in the image here.
Jo asked for our ideas on how to use the movie, and encourage the use of the film to teach certain areas of the curriculum.

This is something which we cover in our unit on the Story of Stuff with Year 8.

Subvertisement booklet - coming to Year 8...

A YouTube video showing the subvertisement workshop which we will be using later in the year with Year 8 students. I helped with a few of the final elements of the booklet.
Great work by Eeva and Ian.

The Story of a Spoon

Year 8 will be looking at this story - our disposable lifestyles and the impact of plastics in the ocean...

Ban the Beads - new on the Story of Stuff...