Take It Home
Recycling is easy once you make it a habit, and it really cuts down on your garbage fast. Your students' parents will be surprised at how little they really throw away once they start separating out what can be recycled. Remind parents to close the recycling loop by buying recycled products, too!
Recycle Detector
Have your students be waste watchers at home. Ask them to answer the following questions with their parents' help:
What's in your garbage at home?
Do you recycle? What do you recycle? How much every week?
If you don't recycle, what's stopping you? Could you recycle?
Give some advice for parents who are new to recycling. Tell them to take small steps to start recycling, like just sorting out paper at first. After that becomes a household habit, start recycling glass as well. Keep adding to your household recycling habits until you're recycling everything your community will take. Sometimes there is no curbside pickup, so you'll have to find where to drop it off. The bright side? Drop-off stations often pay you for your recyclables. Parents can think of something the whole family would enjoy and set aside a jar to save their recycling money. They can challenge students to guess how long they think it will take to reach their goal. This may encourage them to find more recyclable products in the house or start recycling campaigns at church or in the neighborhood.
Close the Loop
Buying items made from recycled materials closes the recycling loop. Luckily, recycled products are becoming so common that often people buy them without even knowing they're recycled. Have your students go on a shopping scavenger hunt with their family and find twenty items that have recycled materials in them. This will be marked on the label. Have students write down the products they find so they can bring the list to school and compare with the other students. A good place to start is with paper products. For example, a major manufacturer of paper plates, Chinet, now has a version made of recycled paper that is also compostable. When students bring their lists to class, talk about the experience. Did the number of products they found surprise them? Was it easier or harder than they thought it would be? Encourage children to talk with the store manager to tell him or her how much they appreciate being able to buy products made out of recycled material.
