Recycle Your Water Bottle
Each plastic bottle will outlive you for centuries. When you can't avoid them, find a way to recycle them!
If we want to ensure our streams, rivers, and bays keep free of trash, we need to teach our children from an early age the beauty of nature and respect for its resources. Schools have an important role in setting standards and expectations on how to treat discarded materials as resources instead of wasting them. By integrating the students into the school's approach, collaboratively checking the status quo, and defining goals and the means to get there, we create the needed sense of ownership to drive positive behaviors.
Problems
Recycling Will Help
Much of what pupils and teachers discard in school facilities and grounds (classrooms, cafeterias, offices, common areas ) is either food waste, paper, or cardboard. The rest, about one-tenth, is metal, glass, plastic and cartons. Nearly everything discarded at school can be recycled or composted. (New York City, 2015)
Recycling Builds the Economy
The economic value of recycling is often underestimated. In Alabama, 84,412 jobs depend on recycling, and it is responsible for 19.4 billion dollars of economic activity in the state (SERDC, 2014)
Actions
Set Up a Recycle Station at your School or Business
Create a permanent recycling program starting with one station.
Triple Recycling Bin from Amazon
Make Recycling a School-Wide Activity
- Invite speakers to share on the topic, educate teachers and students alike
- Go on field trips to explore opportunities and best practices (other schools, colleges, companies)
- Hold contests at your school (recycling song, implementation action, art, t-shirt, receptacle...)
- Contest in Huntsville: collecting plastic caps for 5 months (in 2013 28 schools participated)
- Special curriculum activities on earth day
- Have the older kids develop a training for the younger ones
Create a Green Team
Set up a green team or steering committee made of staff, students, and administrators/ operators.
Network with Nonprofits
- Connect with related nonprofit organizations for support and guidance. (like Keep Mobile Beautiful, Alabama PALS, Green Schools, Plastic Pollution Coalition
- Check your PTA for parents that work with non-profits or who are willing to help
- Consider cooperating with non-profit organizations in your recycle program, e.g.: UCP takes printer cartridges and electronics.
Buy Recycled Goods
When schools use recycled paper, it creates a large environmental benefit due to the amount of paper used for printing, copies, and homework. Even better when toilet paper, paper towels, and napkins come from recycled paper.
Great White 100% Recycled Copy Paper from Amazon
Resources
Alabama Outdoor Classroom Program
The Alabama Outdoor Classroom Program provides free technical and organizational assistance for schools. Their Outdoor Classroom Toolbox includes grant opportunities.
EEAA
Join Alabama's Environmental Education Association of Alabama (EEAA) and there is a local chapter, Mobile Bay Environmental Educators.
NOAA Teaching Material for Schools
NOAA Teaching Material for Schools on marine debris including a learning guide on debris and watershed for different ages groups (PDF)
EPA
EPA Classroom Material including
Quest for Less (K-8 Teachers Guide)
Recycle City (Game)
School Recycling Program (PDF) Guide
The Green Schools Alliance
The Green Schools Alliance connects and empower schools worldwide to lead the transformation to a sustainable future.
Starting a School Recycling Program
Prepared by The Green Team. If you are interested in starting a recycling program at your school this toolkit will provide you with the basic framework for starting a successful recycling program at your school, from planning, identifying, and implementing a program that fits your needs, to monitoring and promoting your hard work.
Related Actions
Do the Trash Mob Dance
The Trash Mob Dance is a simple dance that helps teach the importance of putting trash in a trash receptical and picking up trash you see on the ground.
Invite Clean Water Future Speaker
Create a Clean Water Future has several engaging speakers who would be willing to come to your entire school, class, or club.
Types of Pollution
When water rushes off hardened surfaces, erosion of sediments degrade water conditions and smother and disrupt seagrass growth and the habitat for benthic organisms they provide.
Compounds like oil, grease, and heavy metals take a long time to break down and threaten the health of both aquatic and human life.
Litter is not only unsightly, but it also causes a variety of problems to the ecosystem as it enters our waters where it is often is mistaken for food by fish and invertebrates.
Too much fertilizer, pet waste, and other nutrients in our water often lead to serious problems like lowering dissolved oxygen levels, preventing seagrass growth, and killing fish.
Disease-causing microorganisms, including bacteria, viruses, and other single-celled organisms, are referred to as pathogens, some, like Salmonella, cause human health problems.
While pesticides are designed to be toxic to certain organisms, they can often be harmful and kill other species in the marine system that are important for the entire ecosystem.