Action Tips: Start a School Recycling Program

Do you cringe every time you see a fellow student throwing out a recyclable bottle, can, or some printer paper? You can do something to prevent this from happening. Start a recycling program at your school. It might take some work, but its well worth it.

You’ll probably get dirty

• Try to figure out how much your school wastes every day. Recruit a friend to help you collect cans and bottles from kids after lunch and monitor how much paper is thrown away in garbage cans in class. These stats will provide great evidence when you approach the administration with your idea.

Get your people together

• Organize a team. It should consist of students, teachers and administrators. They will be responsible for the new program. You’ll probably have to sell your idea so the stats you’ve collected will help out. And check out the Do Something facts on recycling for more facts to sway your crew.

What to recycle

• What can be recycled in a school depends on what types of materials are being thrown away and the market that will accept the collected items. The easiest and most common material to recycle in a school is paper. Many schools also recycle aluminum, clothes, printer cartridges and more!

Investigate

• Once you have the approval from your principal, begin investigating. You’ll need to find a company that will handle your recycling. These are available in the phone book or sometimes your local government will have some suggestions. Ask to speak with the recycling coordinator.
• Some towns will provide recycling bins and will collect recyclables on a certain day (usually you will have to move all the bins to a central location).
• If your town doesn’t do this, look into setting up a fundraiser to buy recycling bins for every floor/area of your school (especially the cafeteria). In this case, you’ll probably have to do the emptying and separating for yourself. Then, you will have to take the recyclables to a recycling center.

Be Specific

• Once you are able to get the recycling bins, it would be a good idea to get different colors or shapes for all different recyclables. If you can’t do this, make bright, shiny, attention grabbing labels for all of the bins. It’s a pain to have to separate out all the different recyclables because people were confused about where to put them.

Advertise, Advertise, Advertise!

• You’ll have to spread the word about your new recycling campaign. Post eye-catching signs around school. Make sure these are in prime locations and contain details about the locations of the recycling bins, what can go in them and why it’s so important to recycle. [Check out the Awareness Campaign action guide for more suggestions]

Connection

• It might be fun to start an Environmental Club in your school so more people can help you oversea the recycling process. This is also a good forum for discussing environmental issues across the globe and how you might be able to help.

Start Small

• If your school is huge and you don’t have much help from friends and other students, start by recycling one to two things like paper and plastic and work your way up to aluminum, paper, glass, ink cartridges and batteries.

Don't Stop Here

• There are tons of ways you can keep looking out for the environment…especially at school (since you spend most of your days there). You can make re-usable book covers, save electricity by asking teachers to use sunlight instead of those yucky fluorescent lights, etc.

Tips for your program

• Consider holding a kick-off event at your school site and perhaps tracking and graphing your recycling success to share with your fellow students every month.

• Some schools use the proceeds from recycling cans and bottles to purchase recycling containers, fund field trips, and/or have an end-of-the-year pizza part for the recycling team.
• If you want your recycling program to work, you should source separate. If the material you decide to recycle is paper, you’ll probably need a container for every classroom. Try to make it easier to place the materials in a recycling bin rather than in the trash.
• On that note, recycling bins need to have trash receptacles next to them or your recycling containers may be used for garbage.
• Visit www.earth911.org for local details on recycling…just type in your zip code.

Sources:

St. Charles County Division of Environmental Service- http://www.scchealth.org/docs/es/docs/recycle/school_programs.html

E-How- http://www.ehow.com/how_2123909_start-school-recycling-program.html

Recycle Works- http://www.recycleworks.org/schools/schoolpgm.html