Starting a school recycling program has several benefits. There are also long-lasting effects, as children learn these habits at a young age and ideally practice them throughout their lives.
School Recycling Program Benefits
Educating children about recycling will help to show them why we do it. Once they understand the reasons why recycling is important at home, at school, and at businesses, they are more likely to put what they learn into practice. As these practices of waste reduction and recycling become ingrained habits, it will, ideally, lead to a brighter, cleaner future.
How To Get Started
To get started with a student recycling program, the teachers can help students to organize a fundraiser to raise money towards the costs of a recycling program. Some of the costs that need to be covered include buying recycling containers for classrooms and hallways, renting containers or bins for holding the recycling on-site, and paying for somebody to empty the bins and take away the recycling.
The fundraiser is also a good opportunity to raise awareness in the school’s community about the importance of recycling.
To get students to feel they are a part of the school recycling program effort and to give them a sense of leadership responsibilities, you can start an official recycling club or program that is led by students. This program would be guided by teachers and staff, but would mostly involve the students. Doing this will give the students a sense of ownership over the recycling program and reinforce the importance of personal responsibility in recycling.
Recycling requires collection containers. One of the tasks of the student recycling club could be to identify the best locations for these recycling containers. The goal of placement should be to make recycling easy and accessible for all students, teachers, and staff. Ideally, this means every classroom has at least one recycling container.
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