Teaching Sustainability to Students: Guide and Activities
This guide is designed to help you teach the core aspects of sustainability to students, in an engaging and impactful way.
It addresses the interconnected nature of environmental, social, and economic sustainability.
We’ll use the sustainability challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and plastics as examples to help explain key concepts.
Along the way, we’ll also suggest ideas for teaching activities that will help make sustainability clearer for your students to understand.
First Off, What is Sustainability?
First off, let’s cover the basics of what sustainability means.
Aim to introduce sustainability as the idea of living in a way that ensures future generations can have happy and healthy lives, just like we do today.
The classic sustainability definition often used is:
Meeting the needs of current generations, without harming the ability of future generations to meet their own needs – United Nations Report
Activity: Use simple analogies, like sharing a bag of snacks so everyone has enough, to demonstrate fairness and careful use of resources.
Components of Sustainability to Explain
Sustainability has 3 key components, or pillars. These 3 pillars must be balanced for sustainability to be achieved.
Environmental Sustainability: Keeping the planet clean and safe by protecting nature and reducing waste.
Social Sustainability: Making sure everyone in the world has what they need to live well, like food, clean water, and education.
Economic Sustainability: Using money and resources wisely to avoid running out.
Think of it this way: a sustainable future is held up by these 3 pillars. If one fails then the whole structure falls.
Linking Social, Economic and Environmental Sustainability
Many environmental problems are tied to social and economic issues.
For example, climate change impacts, such as worsening heatwaves and flooding, often hit poorer communities the hardest because they have fewer resources to adapt.
On the other hand, those that are fortunate enough to be in wealthier regions tend to consume more resources. This in turn means they often contribute, or accidentally enable, a greater amount of harm to the environment.
In society, we all have our role to play. Small day-day actions make a difference. Choosing to use a reusable bottle for example might seem like a small gesture, but multiply that over billions of people and we can either prevent a lot of pollution and environmental damage, or cause a lot of harm.
Activity: Use a story-based activity where pupils help a fictional family live sustainably by making decisions like conserving water, recycling, and growing food. What are the different things they can think of in their lives that could impact the environment?
The Big Sustainability Challenges We Face
The sustainability challenges we all face are wide ranging. We recommend using examples of well established, relatable challenges to help teach about sustainability.
3 great examples to use are: Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss and Plastics Use. These are broad topics that can be linked back to daily life and are related to a wide spectrum of sustainability considerations.
For each of these challenges, we have outlined: what it is, why it matters and have provided context for teaching about them.
Teaching Sustainability: Climate Change
What is Climate Change?
Climate change means that the Earth’s usual weather patterns are changing over time. Today, the changes we are seeing in our climate are the result of human activity, mostly the burning of fossil fuels.
We do this for many purposes, such as to fuel cars, run factories, and heat our homes.
When we burn fossil fuels it releases greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide (CO2). In the atmosphere this forms a thicker blanket around the planet that traps more heat from the Sun.
This extra heat trapping is known as the greenhouse effect, and is what leads to the climate change we are seeing today.
Why It Matters
A warmer planet can lead to rising seas, stronger storms, and challenges for the plants, animals, and people who have to adapt.
This harms the sustainability of the environment and also our own ability to generate the resources we will need in the future.
Global Context Examples:
Using Local Context:
Teach how weather in the local area is changing and how it affects crops, animals, or local parks.
Has there been an increase in flooding, or are summer heatwaves becoming hotter? Has this affected the school, the local community or local farmers?
Activity: Create a “greenhouse effect” demonstration using a jar, plastic wrap, and a lamp to show how heat gets trapped.
Teaching Sustainability: Biodiversity Loss
What is Biodiversity Loss?
Biodiversity means all the different types of plants and animals on Earth.
Losing biodiversity happens when animals or plants disappear, often because their habitats are destroyed.
Habitat loss is often caused by human activity, such as building developments or tree logging. Other wider issues, such as climate change also contribute when animals struggle to adapt.
Why It Matters
Every species has a role, like bees that help plants grow food. If one species disappears, the natural balance can be damaged. This in turn can then affect many others, including us.
For example, a sustainable supply of food requires bees and other insects to pollinate the plants we farm. If these insects are lost, food becomes more difficult to grow.
Global Context Example:
The Amazon rainforest holds a huge range of biodiversity, from plants and insects, through to mammals and human tribes. , However, this amazing forest is being damaged daily due to high levels of tree felling and clearance.
As the forest is damaged, biodiversity is being lost, and with it the value it could provide us in the future. For example, some medicines we use and foods we eat originated in the Amazon.
Quick fact: The Amazon rainforest is home to 10% of all the animal species we know about.
Using Local Context:
Discuss nearby wildlife with your students, and how pollution, litter, or construction can affect them.
Are there any animals you see less and less often in your local area? Have there been any areas protected from development to reserve the land for nature?
Activity: Make a simple food web with string and cards to show how animals and plants are connected. Remove one “species” and see what happens to the web.
Teaching Sustainability: Plastics Use
What Are Plastics?
Plastics are materials used to make lots of everyday items like bottles and bags. They’re useful because they’re so adaptable and can last a long time. But this long lifespan can also a problem.
Why Plastics Use Matters
Plastics don’t break down easily, so they pile up in landfills and escape into the ocean. Animals can mistake plastics for food, which can hurt or kill them.
The issue is worsened by the prevalence of ‘single-use plastics‘. These disposable plastics, that are used daily around the world, can rapidly accumulate as waste.
Global Context Example
Plastics that escapes into the ocean can form “plastic islands”.
To teach about this challenge you can use images of these plastic islands to show the scale of plastic waste that can accumulate.
Another effective plastic example is the escape of plastic bags into the ocean. Plastic bags are a common waste item students see or can relate to. Turtles are known to accidentally eat these plastic bags, thinking they’re jellyfish or other food sources. This in turn can lead to harm or the death of the turtle.
Using Local Context:
Highlight any litter problems near the school, in local parks or wider community areas. Plastics can also escape from waste bins on school grounds or at home.
Litter can often accumulate in green spaces, such as under hedges or bushes, as well as potentially escaping into nearby watercourses.
Activity: Create a plastic audit: have pupils list how much plastic they use in one day and brainstorm ways to reduce it.
Classroom-Based Activities and Projects
To support your teaching, we’ve put together some suggested lesson plan topics. Build from these suggested topics to create fun and engaging activities for your students.
Given the limited resources of a classroom setting, these activities focus on creativity and collaboration:
Interactive Lesson Plans
Climate Impact Stories: Create a class story about a local park affected by extreme weather. Pupils decide how to help the park recover.
Biodiversity Crafts: Build paper or clay models of endangered species and write about how to protect them.
Games and Simulations
Eco Detective: Have pupils identify “bad” habits in a fictional story (like littering or wasting water) and suggest solutions.
Sustainability Relay: Teams race to sort items into “recycle,” “reuse,” and “reduce” categories.
Mini Projects
Plastic-Free Day: Challenge pupils to avoid plastic for one day and share their experiences.
Adopt-a-Tree: Encourage pupils to observe and care for a tree or plant near the school, tracking its growth and benefits.
Reflecting on Sustainability
Once the topic of sustainability and examples have been communicated to students, encourage them to think about what they’ve learned and how they can apply it:
Journaling: Have them write about one new habit they’ll adopt to help the planet and support a sustainable future.
Sharing Goals: Hold a class discussion where each child shares a sustainability goal, like turning off lights when leaving a room.
Closing the Loop: Key Sustainability Messages for Students
Educating a Sustainable Generation
Sustainability is a fantastic and engaging topic. Its also one that’s vital to our future and future generations.
This makes teaching sustainability a great, and also vital topic, to include into curriculums and lesson plans.
We hope this guide gives you a solid foundation to inspire your students and share with them how important sustainability is for us all!
To support you further, we also recommend the following resources:
20 School Sustainability Project Ideas to Engage Students
20 Practical Sustainability Ideas for Schools
What is Sustainability: Fundamentals Explained
Lastly, please feel free to let us know how you get on teaching your students about sustainability. Plus, we’re happy to hear from you with any further questions or resource requests you may have. Get in touch via the comments section below, or through our Contact & Collaborate page.
