Geography Fieldwork - Supermarket Sustainability

This is a great field work topic with several different aspects; however, each areas comes under the umbrella of sustainability. Students will need to visit 2 different supermarkets (we visited a small M&S and a large Tesco within walking distance of the school) and find the countries of origin of several fruits and vegetables. As a class we then: labelled these on a blank map of the world (for a display), calculated the distance travelled and created graphs (Excel, cross-curricular with ICT!) based on food miles/carbon emissions. Another aspect was packaging and recycled products. Students had to fill in a survey of the products in the supermarkets; we also interview customers and members of staff for their shopping habits. This all culminated in a huge display on sustainability.

This resource can be adapted for any KS3 class and can be used as a stand alone topic or as part of ecosystems/sustainability topics. It would be great for PSHE too!