As more teachers are boosting their efforts in encouraging kids to recycle, reduce, and reuse, we would like to share some ideas for making a lasting impression on children when it comes to recycling. Kids thrive from hands-on activity, rewards and incentive, so why not combine all three into your teaching approach? By simply making it fun for kids to recycle, we believe that teachers will see more effort from their students to participate in classroom recycling programs.

Turn Recycling Into a Team Effort

There are plenty of fun activities and crafts for children to do using nothing but recyclable products. You can have your students design shirts, posters, and recycling containers with the ‘recycle, reduce, reuse’ theme. Students can then hang their posters over the recycling containers all over the school, thus reminding other students to join them in their efforts in reducing waste.

As the bottles, cans and other recyclable materials fill the recycling containers, teachers can take the items to a local recycling center and redeem them for cash. As the school year progresses, the profits can really add up!

Send Them On a Treasure Hunt for Trash

Students can also collect recyclables from friends and neighbors and set up small recycling containers at home. Students can collect items for their recycling containers, bringing the cans and bottles in for recycling.

Turn Trash Into Fun

At the end of the year, teachers can take all of the money that has been collected from students’ recycling efforts and throw the students a party. This is a great incentive for kids to recycle, because now they realty get to enjoy their reward. Include food, drinks and games for your students to play, all with a recycling theme.

Some fun games to play at the party include a coffee can coin toss, where students toss coins into an old coffee can. Students can also go ‘miniature bowling,’ using a ball and empty two-liter bottles as pins. You can also set up hoops over recycling containers and have students shoot crushed up cans into it. Also, students can be divided into teams to construct the largest tower they can out of cardboard and other recyclable materials — the tallest tower that doesn’t fall over wins.

Teachers can hold a contest where students make crafts out of materials found inside recycling containers. The most creative craft takes the prize.

All of the food and activities are either paid for by taking the recycling containers to a recycling center, or brought in by students from home. Kids will love seeing their efforts pay off, and they will carry the memories of the party with them for years to come. This should help to create waste reducing habits that can last a lifetime.

It is easy to get started with recycling and living a green lifestyle while having an impact on your local, regional, and even the global environment. Here’s how to get started today.

Starting Small While Making A Big Impact – Recycling Bins And Beyond

Making a commitment and getting starting with a set of recycling bins is a huge step. Every item that you place in recycling containers saves that much room in a landfill, saves natural resources from being depleted, and reduces your carbon footprint. A full set of recycling bins on your curbside or taken to your recycling center every week adds up to a big change very quickly.

One of the best parts about recycling is that you can do it no matter where you are. Use your recycling bins at home, recycle while you are in the office, attending classes, and anywhere you can find recycling containers. Plus, by recycling, you will lead by example; once recycling bins start popping up in neighborhoods or at the office many other people take notice and follow that lead.

Knowing How To Fill Up Your Recycling Containers

Still, people can be reluctant to start using recycling containers. They might have difficulty sorting their waste or storing and using the extra recycling bins. Thankfully, recycling containers and their designs have improved greatly over the years. Multi compartment recycling bins plus nesting and slip together recycling containers make for easy, instant sorting while saving on space.

Much of the waste that we generate on a daily basis can be recycled. Plastic containers, aluminum cans, newspaper, office paper, magazines, phone books, electronics, and many more items can all be recycled. The best way to find out is to go to your local recycling center or contact city hall. You will be amazed at what you can put into your recycling bins.

Going One Step Further – Reduce And Reuse

You can go one step further than filling up your recycling bins. Reduce what you use and reuse what you do use. Every single item you can refrain from using has a huge impact; consider how much packaging, transportation fuel, and energy goes into every product. Use cloth napkins instead of paper and heavy duty plastic dishes for outdoor dining. Set your printer to double sided printing to cut your office paper usage in half.

After you finish using a product, find another use for it. Containers can be re-used to hold pantry items, hand soap, knick knacks, and more. Combine scrap lumber, wood stain, and a few hooks to create a decorative coat rack. The possibilities are endless.

Reduce, reuse, and recycle; start today and have an impact.

Time For A Trash Audit

A trash audit is a simple act that you can do at home. Basically, it consists of sorting through your trash to see how much recyclable materials you are currently throwing into your neighborhood landfill. Most people are stunned when they realize the extent of their past wastefulness. As garbage rates continue to rise, it becomes even more cost effective to recycle whatever you can. Simply placing recycling containers next to trash cans and educating family members may be all the effort that is required to create a successful recycling program in your home.

Businesses can use their local recycling service to conduct a trash audit. Offices, manufacturers and service companies produce volumes of recyclable materials that have been historically thrown into landfills, resulting in toxic air, soil, and water supplies. A trash audit provides business owners and managers with the financial numbers they need to make effective decisions about how many bins for recycling they will need for their facility.

Special Tips For Reducing Waste

At home, you can reduce much of your paper waste by cancelling unwanted subscriptions and reusing the backs of documents for things like shopping lists and to-do notes. When shopping, opt for minimal packaging and bigger quantities of frequently purchased items. Placing recycling bins where they are most needed, such as next to a desk and in the kitchen can increase their likelihood of being used.

Businesses can use the same basic rational by placing bins for recycling where they are most needed: in employee break rooms, near printers, under desks, near vending machines and near any manufacturing processes that generate recyclable materials. These simple steps can turn into a landslide of savings, both financial and environmental.

Back In The Black

In today’s troubled economy, homes and businesses are operating on the brink of financial disaster. Every area where money can be saved is worth consideration. Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle installed recycling bins and was then delighted to discover that they were able to reduce their contribution to the landfill by 80% and that they saved themselves over $170,000 in the first year of the program. Those are some substantial numbers.

Today’s recycling bins are clearly labeled with which recyclables go where, or if it is a single stream service, all types of recyclable materials can be deposited into the same container. Recycling today makes sense, and best of all saves a lot of money.