Enquiry into the citizenship issue

1. Enquiry into the citizenship issue (10 marks)
Choose an issue and say why the issue is important locally and nationally.
Attach issue based evidence.

(a) The issue that I and my group agreed upon was recycling as we wanted to raise awareness on the importance of recycling and help people to understand the benefits of recycling; Recycling helps conserve important raw materials and protects natural habitats for the future. Using recycled materials in the manufacturing process uses considerably less energy than that required for producing new products from raw materials – even when comparing all associated costs including transport etc. Plus there are extra energy savings because more energy is required to extract, refine, transport and process raw materials ready for industry compared with providing industry-ready materials.
When we recycle, recyclable materials are reprocessed into new products, and as a result the amount of rubbish sent to landfill sites reduces. There are over 1,500 landfill sites in the UK, and in 2001, these sites produced a quarter of the UK’s emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Also what happens to the land we use to dump all our rubbish, eventually it will fill up and we won’t have anywhere else to dump our rubbish at, we will end up with more landfills the more we recycle.
I talked about this issue with 4 pupils in my class and we all agreed that it was a very important issue both locally and nationally, we were also concerned about recycling in the school as its also part of the local area. I realized that if the local area could change then eventually it would also help in order to meet the national targets.
We discussed the sharing of responsibilities when doing our research, we all researched information,two students created posters on the importance of recycling , another took photographs of litter around the school and I interviewed the deputy head of our school and we also communicated with the schools facilities manager.

I have attached a Poster about recycling that we stuck around our local area, also I took photographs of litter around the school.

Describe how the issue links to Citizenship themes from Unit 1.
(b) It relates to the theme of global community and human rights and responsibilities and the discussion of recycling will definitely lead to a better society. Unit 1 consists of issues where you need to save recourses which will lead to a better society. Recycling will help to reduce many problems and to support better use of world recourses.
It relates to the global community as recycling is part of it, many resources are becoming increasingly scarce and it obviously makes a lot of sense to re-use things as much as we can. Moreover if don’t recycle a lot will have to be buried in landfill sites and many of them in Britain are now full.
This issue is also linked to the theme; power, politics and the media. Our MP’s and councilors are trying very hard to tell us the importance of saving the environment, even the two main parties, Labour and conservatives claim that the environment is an increasingly significant issue.
Unit 1 consists of issues where you need to save resources which will lead to a better society. Recycling will help to reduce many problems and to support better use of world resources. As humans we are stewards to the earth therefore it is our responsibility to ensure that the environment is kept clean and safe for our future generations. Responsibility also personally elevates us as better human beings. We should all recognize that we are not just citizens to our local communities, but in a bigger and more important sense, were citizens of our planet. Most animals have sense enough not to trash their environment and were supposed to be more intelligent.