Start a school recycling program

First Things First

Talk to your principal and a teacher who will be supportive of your project. Make sure you go to them with a pretty clear plan of action and convince them that your school needs to recycle.

You'll Probably Get Dirty

It might be a good idea to try to figure out how much your school wastes every day. Collect the cans and bottles from kids after lunch and monitor how much paper is thrown away in garbage cans in each class. These stats will be good evidence.

Investigate

Once you have the approval from your principal, begin investigating how you can go about getting recycling bins and such. 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.

Signage

Post signs around school about your new recycling campaign. 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.

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 a couple things like aluminum and plastic and work your way up to 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.

Visit www.earth911.org for local details on recycling…just type in your zip code.