AQA GCSE Chemistry (8462), Higher tier · Using resources › Life cycle assessment and recycling
Practise Ways of reducing the use of resources. 12 exam-style questions on this subtopic, at up to four difficulty levels, with full mark schemes and a progress tracker. Free, no account needed.
Cover the answers and test yourself. The app has these as flashcards that come back just before you'd forget them.
Put these in order of preference for sustainability, most preferred first: recycle, reduce, reuse.
reduce, reuse, recycle
Sample questions
Written for this site in the style of AQA exam questions. They are not taken from real past papers.
Question 1Easy4 marks
(a) Which is an example of reusing a product? Tick (✓) one box.[1]
Washing and refilling glass milk bottles
Melting scrap steel to make new steel
Crushing glass bottles to make new glass
Burning plastic waste to generate electricity
(b) Give two benefits of reducing the use of, reusing and recycling materials.[2]
(c) Glass bottles that cannot be reused are crushed and melted to make new glass products. Give one advantage of this compared with making glass from raw materials.[1]
Show the answer and mark scheme
(a)Answer: Washing and refilling glass milk bottles
(b)
reduces the use of limited resources
reduces the use of energy sources
reduces waste / landfill
reduces environmental impacts (e.g. of quarrying and mining)
(c)
less energy is needed / fewer raw materials (sand, limestone, sodium carbonate) are used / less quarrying
Question 2Medium5 marks
Metals are produced from limited raw materials.
(a) Describe how metals are recycled.[1]
(b) Some scrap steel is added to the iron produced in a blast furnace. Give one advantage of doing this.[1]
(c) Scrap aluminium used to make new drinks cans must be separated from other metals. Explain why.[2]
(d) Give one environmental impact of obtaining raw materials by mining and quarrying.[1]
Show the answer and mark scheme
(a)
they are melted and recast / reformed into different products
(b)
it reduces the amount of iron that needs to be extracted from iron ore
(c)
other metals would change the composition of the aluminium (alloy)
so the new metal would not have the properties needed for drinks cans
(d)
destroys habitats / scars the landscape / noise / dust / large amounts of waste rock / uses energy
Question 3Hard6 marks
Mixed plastic waste contains several different polymers. To make new food bottles, PET must be separated from the other plastics and cleaned very thoroughly. PET that is less well separated can be used to make fibres for fleece clothing.
(a) Explain why the amount of separation needed depends on the product being made.[2]
(b) Suggest two reasons why not all plastic waste is recycled.[2]
(c) A company claims its bottles are 'better for the environment' because they are made from 50% recycled PET. Evaluate this claim.[2]
Show the answer and mark scheme
(a)
food bottles need very pure PET to be safe and to have the required properties (e.g. strength, clarity)
fibres can still have suitable properties with small amounts of other polymers / less purity
(b)
collecting and sorting is expensive
different polymers are difficult to separate
some polymers (thermosetting polymers) cannot be melted and reshaped
waste is contaminated (e.g. with food)
recycled plastic may cost more than new plastic
(c)
using recycled PET reduces the use of crude oil (a finite resource), energy and waste
but half the PET is still new and the bottles are still single-use; the claim may be based on a selective LCA that ignores other stages (e.g. transport, disposal)