Educating Tomorrow

Do you often find yourself uttering this very question?

Well here's how I did it:

Step 1. Request necessary publications, decals, poster, videos, coloring books, magnets, etc from the NYC Department of Sanitation. http://www.nyc.gov/recycle

Step 2: Replace old dirty blue recycling bins that are coated with trash from their many years serving as garbage bins in teh school with real garbage bins and sparkling new blue recycling bins for paper only in every classroom. This cost $1,500 for a school with 4 floors and approximately 500 students grades 6 - 8. I wrote and we receive a grant from http://www.donorschoose.org. The grant also paid for large CLEAR (not blue) collection bags, a wheeled collection bin for each floor, bottle collection bins for the cafeterias and main office, and sanitary gloves for the kids to collect with.

Step 3: Train your community and work out collection issues. Department of Sanitation provides the training videos. Simply organize an assembly and then recruit kids to help collect. They will eagerly volunteer. Figure out a time during the week for them to collect from each classroom. You have to really butter up your custodial staff so that they will leave the recycling alone (otherwise it might get thrown out). I had an after-school club of kids would collected the paper and bottles, weighed it, graphed it, and finally used a huge rolling bin to take the paper out to the curb the night before "collection." I put collection in quotes because I could never get a clear answer on when that collection was and our recyclables would sometimes sit for weeks on end out side the school until papers slip open and littered the streets. We'd call repeatedly and many times the excuse was that we weren't allowed to use blue bags (which we used at first since they were left over). This right here is to me the largest issue about having a program... there isn't an infrastructure in the city or the DOE to support a culture of recycling. It's a mind-set and a value system that must be taught in school in order for it change anything on a large scale.

Step 4: Promote the program by having a recycling poster making contest and offering a cash prize for the winner. Hang the posters in the lobby and ask teachers to vote on their favorites with a ballot box in the main office.

Step 5: Monitor the progress of students and staff. Students should keep a log when collecting and document the amount of paper in the bins and any garbage found in bins. Teachers with garbage in their bins will be issued a summons for $1 to support the recycling program. Students can write up the summons at the club meeting after-school too.

Step 6: Apply for the Sanitation Department's Golden Apple Awards by taking pictures and documenting your program. http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/html/recycling/recycling_schools.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/html/recycling/recycling_schools.shtml . We won honorable mention for our program since our entire building wasn't recycling. We shared the building with three other schools, which made our school ineligible for any prize other than honorable mention. Another flaw of the

Step 7: Celebrate by distributing t-shirts, award certificates, prizes, and cake to all of the students that participated in the poster making contest and the recycling team all year.

Do you have any additional ideas or resources? I'd love to take a trip to MRF. They show one on the sanitation videos and kids asked to go see one, but as far as I know, you can't.