This is the Applied Sustainable Systems Survey route
Ten lessons across real systems — e-waste and life-cycle analysis, kaitiakitanga design principles, renewable generation, materials, efficiency, transport, water, agritech — each judged on stated criteria and cited data. Choose it when you want analysis and argument. If you want ākonga building and testing a prototype, take the studio route.
Other teaching approach: Sustainable Design Studio →Duration
20 lessons (2 tracks)
Year Level
Years 9-10
Subjects
Technology, Science
Focus
Kaitiakitanga
"Toitū te whenua, whatungarongaro te tangata"
The land remains, while people come and go
Our technological choices must serve the wellbeing of the land that sustains us all.
📋 Unit Overview
This unit explores how technology can be designed and used in ways that protect and restore our environment. Students will investigate sustainability challenges, analyse existing technologies, and design their own sustainable solutions.
Ngā Whāinga Akoranga — Learning Intentions
- Understand the environmental impacts of technology (positive and negative)
- Apply life cycle thinking to evaluate products
- Design technological solutions that minimise environmental harm
- Connect sustainability to kaitiakitanga and Indigenous knowledge
- Evaluate technologies using sustainability criteria
- Create prototypes that address real environmental challenges
Paearu Angitu — Success Criteria
- I can evaluate a technology product using life cycle thinking and at least two sustainability criteria
- I can design a prototype that addresses a real environmental challenge and explain my kaitiakitanga reasoning
- I can present my design to an audience and respond to questions about trade-offs
🏛️ The Three Pillars of Sustainability
Environmental
Protecting ecosystems, reducing pollution, conserving resources, restoring nature
Taiao — Environment
Social
Equity, health, community wellbeing, cultural preservation, fair treatment
Tangata — People
Economic
Viable businesses, fair wages, long-term thinking, circular economy
Ōhanga — Economy
True sustainability requires balance across all three pillars.
📖 Unit Structure
Introducing the three pillars and kaitiakitanga
Environmental impacts of everyday tech
From raw materials to end-of-life
Designing out waste
Solar, wind, and NZ's energy future
Traditional sustainable practices
Identifying a real problem to solve
Building sustainable solutions
Improving our designs
Presenting solutions
🗺️ Wāhi Ako | Choose Your Lesson Track
This unit has two complete lesson tracks, both covering Sustainable Technology for Years 9–10. They are genuinely different: choose the one that fits your class's current focus, or teach them as a complementary sequence.
Design-thinking framework applied to sustainability: three pillars, life cycle introduction, circular economy, Māori innovation in renewable energy, and a full design-challenge-prototype-showcase arc.
Best for: Technology design contexts, introduction to sustainability, project-based learning
A dual-framework investigation: every lesson applies both LCA (life cycle analysis — measurable ecological impact) and kaitiakitanga (relational obligation — who must be consulted, what must be restored). Eight domain investigations, Design Journal arc, and a prototype showcase.
Best for: Environmental science integration, te ao Māori framing, Year 10 depth inquiry
- L11: LCA & E-Waste
- L12: Kaitiakitanga & Indigenous Design
- L13: Renewable Energy Technologies
- L14: Sustainable Materials
- L15: Smart Design — Energy Efficiency
- L16: Smart Cities — Micro-Mobility
- L17: Water Technology
- L18: Agritech & Food Systems
- L19: Design Challenge — Prototyping
- L20: Capstone Showcase
Using both tracks: Track A provides the design-thinking scaffolding; Track B adds the LCA-kaitiakitanga analytical depth. They can be sequenced (A first, then B for a full 20-lesson unit) or taught in parallel across different class groups as differentiated versions of the same unit.
🎯 Student Project Ideas
♻️ Waste Reduction
Design a system to reduce food waste in the school cafeteria
☀️ Solar Solutions
Create a solar-powered device for a specific school need
💧 Water Conservation
Design a rainwater collection or greywater system
🌿 Urban Greening
Create a vertical garden or native planting system
🚲 Sustainable Transport
Design infrastructure for active transport at school
📦 Packaging Innovation
Create sustainable alternatives to single-use packaging
📋 Kaiako Planning Snapshot
Entry / On-level / Extension:
- Entry: Focus on Lessons 1–3 only (what is sustainability, technology's footprint, life cycle). Use the three-pillars graphic as a visual scaffold. Pair students for the design challenge.
- On-level: Complete the full 10-lesson sequence. Students select one project idea and develop a prototype with teacher guidance.
- Extension: Design and pitch an original solution to a community sustainability challenge, incorporating Indigenous knowledge and quantitative evidence.
Inclusion Guidance:
- ESOL / ELL learners: Provide visual glossaries for key sustainability terms; allow bilingual project documentation. The kaitiakitanga framing often resonates with students from Pacific and Asian contexts — draw on their environmental knowledge.
- Neurodiverse learners / ADHD: Break the design challenge into daily micro-tasks. Use visual project boards. UDL: accept 3D models, video diaries, or oral presentations as alternatives to written reports.
📋 Curriculum Alignment
NZ Curriculum — Technology
- Technological Practice: Planning, brief development, outcome development
- Nature of Technology: Characteristics of technology, technology and society
- Technological Knowledge: Technological systems, technological products
NZ Curriculum — Science
- Planet Earth and Beyond: Earth systems, sustainability
- Physical World: Energy transformations
Key Competencies: Thinking, Participating and Contributing
Values: Ecological sustainability, Innovation, Integrity
🔗 Unit Progression & Next Steps
The 20 lessons in this unit, in teaching order. These are step numbers, not lesson numbers — each lesson keeps its own Track A (L1–10) or Track B (L11–20) label, so the same lesson may appear here as a different number:
- 📖 Step 1: Life Cycle Analysis & E-Waste
- 📖 Step 2: What Is Sustainability?
- 📖 Step 3: Technology's Footprint
- 📖 Step 4: Kaitiakitanga & Indigenous Design
- 📖 Step 5: Renewable Energy Technologies
- 📖 Step 6: Life Cycle Thinking
- 📖 Step 7: Circular Economy
- 📖 Step 8: Sustainable Materials — Bioplastics & Upcycling
- 📖 Step 9: Smart Design — Energy Efficiency & Standby Power
- 📖 Step 10: Renewable Energy & Māori Innovation
- 📖 Step 11: Indigenous Knowledge & Kaitiakitanga
- 📖 Step 12: Smart Cities — Micro-Mobility & Sustainable Transport
- 📖 Step 13: Design Challenge & Brief
- 📖 Step 14: Water Technology — Rainwater & Greywater Systems
- 📖 Step 15: Prototyping & Material Choice
- 📖 Step 16: Agritech — Vertical Farming & Sustainable Food
- 📖 Step 17: Sustainable Technology Design Challenge — Prototyping
- 📖 Step 18: Testing & Iteration
- 📖 Step 19: Tech Design Showcase
- 📖 Step 20: Sustainable Technology Capstone Showcase
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot
Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria
- I can trace a technology’s life cycle and name where its biggest impacts actually occur.
- I can support a sustainability position with cited evidence — and state what evidence would change my mind.
- I can explain a genuine trade-off in a design decision, including who gains and who carries the cost.
- I can describe how kaitiakitanga obligations shape design decisions for Aotearoa.
- I can read New Zealand’s electricity generation mix accurately and use it in an argument without confusing electricity with total energy.
Differentiation & Inclusion
Entry-level learners: Give the life-cycle and water-yield calculations with the units already laid out and one worked row completed, so the thinking is about the sustainability trade-off rather than about where the numbers go. Let ākonga present a design verbally or as an annotated sketch instead of a written report.
ELL / ESOL: Pre-teach the load-bearing terms — life cycle, embodied energy, circular, catchment, potable — with a picture and a real object for each. Allow thinking and first-draft notes in a learner’s first language before the English write-up, and keep a running bilingual word wall the class adds to.
Accelerated learners: Ask for the second-order effect: whose water or energy problem does this design move somewhere else, and who carries that cost? Accelerated ākonga should source their own rainfall, roof-area or energy-rating data and defend the reliability of the source, not just the answer.
Neurodiverse / Inclusion: Offer a quiet space and a fixed workstation for the build and testing phases, and break the design task into named stages with one deliverable each so progress is visible. Let a learner who thinks in systems lead the diagramming — this unit rewards that strength directly.