Make an estimate of how much rubbish your household produces in one week. How much do you recycle? How much do you just discard as rubbish?

Does your local council operate a door-to-door collection for recyclable paper/glass/plastic/cans? Find out about local recycling schemes. Produce posters to advertise their use and for one trial week, try to recycle as much of your rubbish as possible. Think about the difference it may make.

If your school has a canteen or cafeteria service, does it sell healthy food? Does it use lots of packaging on its products? Carry out an analysis of the way things are sold. Design a survey to see what people think about the way food is packaged and how to reduce the amount of waste. Write a report for your school council suggesting ways of cutting down on packaging.

Look at the labels on clothes you are wearing at the moment. Find out where they were made. Using a world map, plot the places where your clothes came from. Are there any surprises?

Write a letter to the manager of your local supermarket to find out whether they support fair trade by stocking fair trade products. Ask what these products are and what country they came from. If they do not support fair trade, ask them why?

Companies want to attract you, a teenager, as a customer. What do you think teenagers could do to affect the world economy and to make trade fair?