Encouraging Students to Utilize Recycling Containers in Ways That Pay

With recycling being our priority, we’re thrilled that students are being educated on the environmental impacts that come from waste.

As more teachers are boosting their efforts in encouraging kids to recycle, reduce, and reuse, we would like to share some ideas for making a lasting impression on children when it comes to recycling. Kids thrive from hands-on activity, rewards and incentive, so why not combine all three into your teaching approach? By simply making it fun for kids to recycle, we believe that teachers will see more effort from their students to participate in classroom recycling programs.

Turn Recycling Into a Team Effort

There are plenty of fun activities and crafts for children to do using nothing but recyclable products. You can have your students design shirts, posters, and recycling containers with the ‘recycle, reduce, reuse’ theme. Students can then hang their posters over the recycling containers all over the school, thus reminding other students to join them in their efforts in reducing waste.

As the bottles, cans and other recyclable materials fill the recycling containers, teachers can take the items to a local recycling center and redeem them for cash. As the school year progresses, the profits can really add up!

Send Them On a Treasure Hunt for Trash

Students can also collect recyclables from friends and neighbors and set up small recycling containers at home. Students can collect items for their recycling containers, bringing the cans and bottles in for recycling.

Turn Trash Into Fun

At the end of the year, teachers can take all of the money that has been collected from students’ recycling efforts and throw the students a party. This is a great incentive for kids to recycle, because now they realty get to enjoy their reward. Include food, drinks and games for your students to play, all with a recycling theme.

Some fun games to play at the party include a coffee can coin toss, where students toss coins into an old coffee can. Students can also go ‘miniature bowling,’ using a ball and empty two-liter bottles as pins. You can also set up hoops over recycling containers and have students shoot crushed up cans into it. Also, students can be divided into teams to construct the largest tower they can out of cardboard and other recyclable materials — the tallest tower that doesn’t fall over wins.

Teachers can hold a contest where students make crafts out of materials found inside recycling containers. The most creative craft takes the prize.

All of the food and activities are either paid for by taking the recycling containers to a recycling center, or brought in by students from home. Kids will love seeing their efforts pay off, and they will carry the memories of the party with them for years to come. This should help to create waste reducing habits that can last a lifetime.