Get your whole school on a reusing kick by sparking everyone's imaginations with a few simple ideas. With everyone working together, you can keep mounds of materials out of the landfill.

Reclamation Station

Find a spot in your school that is easily accessible and visible to everyone. Use medium-sized garbage cans, recycling containers, or large boxes to set up a reclamation station. Make labels for each container so that the materials are organized. You can have a spot for cardboard boxes (flatten them but don't damage them so people can simply fold them back into shape to reuse). You can also collect other materials such as clean yogurt tubs, broken crayons (they can be melted into new ones), gloves and mittens that have lost their partners (sew and stuff into little animals or puppets), other textiles, wrapping and tissue paper, and whatever else you want to reuse. Teachers and students can regularly visit the reclamation station to find materials for crafts and other projects.

One Person's Junk Is Another Person's Treasure

Make one of your annual school fundraisers a schoolyard sale. Ask parents, staff, and neighbors in the community to donate gently used clothes, toys, books, tools, household goods, jewelry, and whatever else they may have lying around. To facilitate the process, you can request that they put a price tag on each item they donate. It saves the sale coordinators an enormous amount of time, and it also ensures that you are asking a fair price for the item. Make it clear that the items that do not sell will not be returned; instead, they will be donated to a local charity or thrift store.

Prepare for the sale by promoting it widely in school announcements and community newsletters or bulletin boards. Don't have it on a holiday weekend. Make plenty of readable, attractive signs for the day of the sale. Make sure you have plenty of volunteers, snacks, and drinks to sell to customers, and extra-extra small bills and coins for change. You'll also need calculators for totaling purchases and piles of plastic and paper grocery bags (reused, of course!)