Even garbage that's been thrown away contributes to pollution problems, especially pollution of water ways. As rain falls through the layers of garbage in a landfill, it picks up toxins that are then absorbed into the ground water and can pollute drinking water supplies. Show your students how composting is a better solution by making a miniature see-through compost pile and landfill model out of two liter bottles. An apple half buried in each looks very different after a month, giving students a visual understanding of why composting is important in efforts to reduce pollution in waterways.
Greenhouse gasses are essential to life on earth. Heat travels from the sun to the earth, and while some is released back into space, the rest is trapped by the earth's atmosphere and keeps the planet warm enough to live on. Have your students participate in a hands-on activity describing both the greenhouse effect, and how pollution in the atmosphere affects it, by dividing them into groups, with some students representing heat and others the greenhouse gasses in the earth's atmosphere. Assign twice as many students to represent heat as gasses, and have them mingle, with the heat trying to pass through the gasses. Now increase the gasses by adding more students to that group so they can see why the balance is important as more heat is trapped.
All sectors of society, including industry, agriculture and domestic, contribute to pollution of drinking water. Have students brainstorm how each sector adds to the problem, and how each can work to solve the problem. Have students work in groups to design and make posters that share the information they've learned about how these sectors pollute drinking water. This project helps students understand how all the sectors interconnect, and what they can do to fix the problem of drinking water pollution. For instance, if students agree that pesticides are an agricultural contribution to drinking water pollution, they can see that buying pesticide-free produce is a domestic solution to the agricultural problem.
According to World Wildlife, the global climate has warmed 1/2 to 1 degree Fahrenheit in the last 100 years. Weather refers to the current or near future conditions around your students, while climate involves all the weather in the area in the past, as well as predictions for the future. Students can access NASA's Common Sense Climate Index to study the climate for their town, or a nearby town, and determine whether the weather in that area has changed in concert with the global averages. Students can use this data to understand how air pollution affects the weather.