Recycling is a business from collecting, cleaning, distributing and creating new products. Currently, 1.5 million tons of trash is diverted from landfills by recycling and reducing waste. Most cities have recycling programs; call your city service department for guidelines. How do we improve our recycling rates? Rates improve by encouraging school and parent’s workplaces start to recycle and instill recycling as a good habit.

Why should people recycle? Recycling saves land and natural resources. Also, products made with recyclable material use less energy in the manufacturing process.

Recycling Classroom Activities

Grade K-3: Treasures from Trash

Objective: Students learn an alternative to throwing away trash by making it into art.
Materials: Clean trash: cans, milk cartons, milk jugs, egg cartons, plastic containers, cardboard tubes, string, paper, paper cup, etc... Paint paintbrushes, markers, glue, tape, newspaper, paper mache paste, science journals and scale.
Vocabulary: Reuse

Procedures:

1. Students should bring 3-5 trash items that have been rinsed to share with the class.
2. Discuss that each person throws away about 5 pounds of trash per day. How can people limit what they throw away? Reduce, reuse and recycle. One specific way is to create art work or a useful item from trash.
3. Search recycled crafts and pick one or two projects. Make a sample.
4. Have students do a trashy craft and explain what trash items were used.

Time: one class period

Conclusion: Have them weigh their projects to determine the amount of trash that they prevented from being disposed of in a landfill.

Extension: Have students write a poem or a creative story about their new creation. Have class share their creations and display them.

Grade 4-6: When they’re gone, they’re gone

Objective: Students will learn about the availability of natural resources by participating in a international competition for resources.
Materials: 400 red craft beads, 104 blue beads, 31 pink, 12 green, 1 orange, 1 yellow, 1 purple, 1 clear; 5-7 plastic cups, writing materials
Vocabulary: conservation, natural resources, nonrenewable resources, renewable resources, recycling, solid waste, industrialization

Procedures:

1. Discuss consumption of natural resources and the waste produced from manufacturing of products. Explain the difference between renewable and nonrenewable natural resources, and have students brainstorm resources in each category.
2. Explain the activity: The colored beads represent different nonrenewable resources. The total number of beads represents the amount of minerals that exist in the world; however, it does not represent the ease of extraction or its potential availability.
3. Reproduce the following as a transparency, handout or on the board.
   
   

   Color	# of beads	Finite resource	1987 Estimates of global reserves
   Red	400	Iron in ore	98.0 Billion ST
   Blue	104	Bauxite (aluminum ore)	23.2 Billion MT
   Pink	31	Chromium	7.5 Billion ST
   Green	12	Copper	566.0 Million MT
   Orange	1	Lead	142.0 Million MT
   Yellow	1	Tin	4.3 Million MT
   Purple	1	Silver	10.8 Billion Troy Ounces
   Clear	1	Platinum	2.1 Billion Troy Ounces

   ST= Short Ton of 2,000 pounds MT= Metric Ton of 2,200 pounds
   
4. Hide the beads throughout the classroom in easy and difficult places.
5. Divide the students into teams representing countries. The size of the group will vary depending upon that country’s exploration ability. A group of 6 represents the USA and Russia, 4 – Europe, 3 - Japan, 2 - South Africa and 1 - Malaysia, etc... Each team gets a plastic cup for their bead resources.
6. Give teams two minutes to search for resources. After the exploration, have the students record the number and color of beads in their cup.
7. Repeat the search for one minute and again have students record their search results.
8. On the board or overhead, record natural resource and it amount for all the countries

Time: one to two class periods

Conclusion:

• Discuss the difficulties in finding resource during the exploration periods. Competition should have been more intenseduring the second exploration because the teams were competing for fewer resources. The teams with more people should have more natural resources.
• Discuss real life examples of countries competing for resources such as oil or gold.
• Discuss how natural resources are eventually thrown away in the form of products, which people discard. These natural resources end up in landfills never to be used again.
• Questions for students: How can the students extend the life of nonrenewable resources? What are the advantages of extending the life of resources?

Extension: Have students research and report on methods or products that conserve nonrenewable resources or that use of renewable resources.

Grade 7-12 Market Recycling

For this activity, you may want to team with the art or industrial technology departments.

Objective: Students will investigate environmental symbols and design a recycling logo for posters, banners or t-shirts to promote recycling and/or Earth Day.
Materials: magazine, book of logos, silk-screening items or computer graphic software and iron-on transfer ribbon. Note: when designing an iron-on transfer the design and words will need to be flip horizontally, so words can be read correctly. Also, you will need to decide on black and white, two colored or four color process.
Vocabulary: Recycling, public awareness

Procedures:

1. Have students work in pairs to identify and research 15-25 different environmental logos and slogans from products, public awareness campaigns and advertisements in newspapers, catalogues, magazines, t.v. and web sites. The research should include the meaning of the design in relation to the mission of the organization or company.
2. Students will share five logos with the class.
3. A group of students or each student will design a logo and slogan.
4. Discuss the manufacturing process of printing, and explain how the students will product their logos.
5. Split the students into groups, and have them write down a process order for the production line for their logo. Each student in the group will play a role in production.
6. Print

Conclusion:

• Each group should evaluate their technique and process order and share those changes with the class.
• Display and/or sell and wear t-shirts or display signs, posters and banners in the school for Earth Day (April 22nd) or American Recycles Day (November 15 th).

Time: two or three class periods, homework

Extension: Have the students determine what to do with their waste products from the logo production, and could they have reused or recycled waste materials? Have them research environmental sound processes such as using organic inks in printing.

Web Resources for Recycling

http://www.container-recycling.org/: Facts on recycling and recyclables.
http://grn.com/: Global Recycling network
http://www.grrn.org/: Grassroot recycling network
http://www.nrc-recycle.org: National Recycling Coalition
http://www.smartasn.org: Secondary Materials and Recycled Textile Association
http://www.napcor.com: National Association for PET Container Resource
http://www.recycledproducts.org: Recycled Products Purchasing Cooperative (RPPC)
www.gpi.org: Glass Packaging Institute
www.isri.org: Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries
www.corrugated.org: Corrugated packaging council
www.fibrebox.org: Fibre Box Association
www.modplas.com: Modern Plastics
www.naa.org: Newspaper Association of American
http://npcm.plastics.com: The National Plastics Center & Museum