Reduce, Reuse, and Recycling Resources

• Through these resources, schools and teachers can become certified as a Green School, incorporate lessons and activities about sustainability, and increase student participation in sustainable actions.
• There are links for curriculum, activities, partner organizations, field trips, and funding opportunities.

Positives

• There are many valuable resources and a variety of methods for students to take part in enacting real change in their school!
• There are many virtual field trips that are great for both in-person and remote learning environments.

Additional Prerequisites

• The NWF Eco-Schools USA link will take you to a page showing 10 tips to Reduce Consumption and Minimize Waste. The tenth tip has a link to a useful classroom activity guide with lessons for middle and high school.
• Proper implementation of this project will require a variety of school personnel, including administrators, custodial staff, local businesses, parents, etc.
• Students, especially multilingual learners, may need some terms such as global warming, climate change, recycling, reduce, food waste, waste, carbon, greenhouse gases, audit, consumer, watershed and compost defined prior to starting this project.
• In the "project-based learning ideas" document, the Product Toolkit links cannot be accessed and the "How to Write a Bill and Template" and "Background on How a Bill Becomes Law" links are broken.
• "The Environmental Center" link under Central Oregon is not an actual link.

Differentiation

• Economics and financial literacy classes can look at the impact that a waste problem has on the spending and finances of their school, while also addressing the environmental implications that are associated with waste.
• Science classes can implement this project to supplement a unit on carbon emissions, carbon footprints, the effects of greenhouse gases on climate change, and the role of waste and consumption in these concepts.
• Language arts classes can read the provided articles on waste in the United States and identify the main idea and key details of the article.
• Older students can do this project as individuals, pairs or groups, presenting their findings and solutions to the proper audience (for example, the school board). Younger students can do this project as a class with a teacher leading and guiding them through the entirety of the process.
• For the recycling classroom audit, students can be broken into groups, each one taking on a different classroom, and share their results with the rest of the class.
• Language arts classes can create persuasive and/or expository writing to persuade and educate the proper audience in their school about their waste reduction problem/solution.