A group of students painting "Please Recycle" messages on a blue sign.

Refresh Your Recycling Routines

Between hand-raising, hallway transitions, and homework, it can be difficult to prioritize classroom waste management over classroom behavior management. We're sharing tips on how to make recycling responsibly a part of your classroom culture. 

1. Do the "Homework" 

A blue box of plastic bottles on a beach.
Some types of plastic bottles are recyclable, but you'll need to research what can be recycled in your area (Credit: NOAA).

Recycling responsibly starts with knowing what can be recycled in your area. Reach out to your school's facilities staff to find out how waste is disposed, and what materials can be recycled. If they are available, have them visit your classroom to build relationships with your students and help the class better understand the life cycle of their waste. Alternatively, work with your students to research what can be recycled on your own! 

STEM Connection: Exploring different types of materials is a great way to engage learners in physical sciences at any age. For Elementary School students, try categorizing example items by their material type. For Middle or High Schoolers, use the scientific method to make and test predictions about an item's material.

A trash can painted with Oscar the Grouch.
Students in Prince George's County, Maryland, decorated the garbage cans on their campus to make sure visitors threw away trash responsibly (Credit: Alice Ferguson Foundation).

 

2. Choose the "Look" 

Decorating and personalizing the classroom can be a big part of classroom culture. By incorporating your recycling station into the overall look of your space, you can show students that taking care of our waste is key to participating in the community. You can have students design and decorate signs with instructions on recycling properly, or you can even have them decorate the bin itself! 

STEM Connection: Turn your recycling station into an Engineering Challenge by giving students materials to design their own recycling bin. Consider problems like "How will we make sure people only recycle appropriate materials?" and "How can we make it easy and fun so that everyone wants to recycle right?".  

 

3. Track Progress

By assessing what your class is throwing away and whether they are sorting their waste correctly, you can track how well your routines are working. 

The Trash Tracker worksheet.
Track your trash with paper or digital worksheets (Credit: NOAA).

A waste audit is a great and easy activity anyone can try to really examine our impact and start thinking intentionally about the waste we produce.

  1. Decide how you are going to record your waste. The Trash Tracker worksheet in An Educator’s Guide to Marine Debris is a great place to start your waste audit. You can find other lesson plans and waste audit materials here. 
  2. Write down everything your classroom throws away or recycles every day for the next week.
  3. At the end of the week, have the students tally all the waste they threw away and brainstorm ideas on how they can reduce their trash that may become marine debris.

You can learn more about schoolwide waste audits and other ways to help prevent marine debris at school on the How to Help at School page. 

STEM Connection: The data collected during your waste audit is a great way to incorporate meaningful math into your classroom. Use your data for word problems, graphing, statistical analysis, or any math concept that you are covering!

A group of people sorting trash into blue buckets.
Sorting waste for an audit can be icky sometimes, but is a great opportunity to get outside and build community! (Credit: One Cool Earth).

4. Extend the Learning All Year

There are many ways you can make sure your recycling routines stick throughout the school year and beyond. Try a few of these ideas to extend the learning!

  • Try a Campus Debris Survey to see how much trash is getting into your schoolyard
  • Monitor marine debris in an area near you and discuss how your efforts can help prevent debris with the Marine Debris Monitoring and Assessment Project
  • Use outreach campaigns like Trash Shouldn't Splash to connect with the wider community and let your students share their work with others. 
  • Take a field trip to your local waste processor to further explore where trash or recycling goes once it leaves the classroom.
  • Start a Green Team for student leaders to inspire and coordinate additional marine debris prevention efforts in the community.
  • Have fun! Celebrate the hard work of recycling responsibly through the Recycling Relay or other marine debris education games. 
Five students wearing green vests look out over a garden.
Student Green Teams can support other campus sustainability efforts, like schoolyard gardens, reducing food waste at lunch, and more! (Credit: One Cool Earth.)

Learn More About Reducing Classroom Waste

The Marine Debris Program supports projects across the country that use outreach and education as a way to prevent marine debris. One of the many ways our partners engage youth in preventing marine debris is through managing and reducing waste directly in the classroom. Here are a few projects that exemplify engaging school waste reduction strategies, along with their resources:

A group of students painting "Please Recycle" messages on a blue sign.
Building a routine of recycling responsibly starts with engaging students in understanding and sharing how and where to dispose of their waste appropriately (Credit: Hawai'i Wildlife Fund).
 

For citation purposes, unless otherwise noted, this article was authored by the NOAA Marine Debris Program.

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