Starting environmental awareness at your school is a great way to bring your school together. This page will help guide you in the right direction for starting recycling, compost, energy reduction programs.
6 easy ways to start recycling bags at your school:
Build a support team for your recycling program
Create a Green Team or Recycle Management Team
Make a plan for the recycling program
Arrange volunteers to drop off the plastics weekly
Promote the plastic recycle program to the school
Analyze, adjust and celebrate
Plastics are part of our life's conveniences. Can you really eliminate plastic from your life? Not really, but you can absolutely take steps to reduce the use of plastic in your life and especially at school.
A student-led team can create a main plastic collection area for students and staff to drop off their clean plastics for recycling. This team would also educate the rest of the school community on how to recycle plastics properly and decrease the use of plastics.
Remember, if the plastic has food or liquid in it, students/staff should not be recycling it. All plastics need to be clean before recycling. If they are not clean, it will contaminate the whole recycling bin. Suggest throwing the plastic in the trash if it is not clean.
One key to plastic recycling is to have a designated team take the plastics from the school and drop the recycling off at local participating stores on a weekly basis:
5 guidelines to start a compost program at your school:
Create a Team
Establish a Plan
Communicate to the School
Implement the Compost Program
Analyze, Adjust and Celebrate
On-site school composting is a great way to reduce your trash in addition to learning about natural resources (food). If you are thinking about starting a composting program at your school review the PDF below. Sometimes adding compost to your school can become overwhelming. We are here to help your team with any questions that may arise. Please feel free to reach out to our department.
Anyone can save energy if they just have a little knowledge. Start an energy-saving campaign at your school. There are several monitoring devices that you may already have available to you. Create your own energy-saving rules for your school. Here is an example below:
ENERGY CONSERVATION TIPS
TURN OFF LIGHTS WHEN NOT NEEDED. Lighting accounts for as much as 40% of o schools energy use. Utilize daylight whenever possible.
TURN OFF ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT AND APPLIANCES WHEN NOT IN USE. Please activate the sleep/hibernate mode on your computer.
ELECTRIC APPLIANCES THAT PRODUCE OR REMOVE HEAT ARE BIG ENERGY CONSUMERS. Portable heaters are strongly discouraged. If your room has o comfort problem, report it to Maintenance staff.
DO NOT TAMPER WITH HEATING/COOLING CONTROLS. Please let the Operations Department know about your heating or cooling issues.
CLOSE BLINDS, SHADES, CURTAINS AND SHUTTERS AT THE END OF EACH DAY.
REPORT LEAKY FAUCETS AND RUNNING TOILETS.
BE ALERT FOR ENERGY SAVING OPPORTUNITIES AND CONTESTS. PROVIDE SUGGESTIONS TO ADMINISTRATORS OR MAINTENANCE STAFF.
