The first objective to cover in your recycling lesson plan is teaching that recycling is simply the process of turning one item into another. When an item no longer is useful in its current form, recycling programs find a different use for that item and its materials, resulting in less landfill waste while saving energy, decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving natural resources and generally helping the environment. The next step is the execution of the recycling process. Students should learn that specific items made of certain materials must be removed from the trash and organized before being picked up by waste management staff or dropped off at a recycling center. The specifics vary by community, but the categories typically include paper, plastic, glass, aluminum and electronics. If possible, hang your community's recycling instructions, usually distributed to residents in the form of a poster, as a reminder of the rules. The class could then work together to decorate boxes that can be used as recycling bins for your classroom, making signs for each to indicate which bin is for paper items, glass and other recyclable items. Before using these boxes, for one day the children should throw all of their trash into one larger box to demonstrate the amount of waste we produce. Students then can sort out the items to be recycled to see first-hand the reduction of waste recycling provides.
Your students will want to know what happens after the recycling is picked up or dropped off. After completing the hard work of separating recyclable goods from trash, where does it all go and what is it actually used for when it gets there? It could benefit them to know that the staff at the materials recovery facilities also sorts the items, organizing them into categories based on what each will be used for in the next step of manufacturing. For instance, they will learn what items will become part of a roll of paper towels and which materials will become a laundry detergent bottle or even a road or bridge. Use instructional videos or take a field trip to a plant to teach students about the process with visual and/or hands on instruction. As a follow-up task, students could work in classroom groups sorting cleaned recyclable goods just as the facility staff would do. Each group could be graded on how accurately they categorized the items.
Proof may be the most beneficial lesson objective. Encourage your students to follow through with what they have learned by showing them what happens when people choose not to recycle. Demonstrate the importance of the steps they just learned through documentaries about landfills and what has occurred over the years because these these processes have not been followed. Another field trip, in this case to a landfill, will provide a tangible example of the waste problem we are trying to fix through recycling as they will witness first-hand the vast amount of trash we already have accumulated. Visit local stores and assign students a scavenger hunt in which they must track down products comprised of a certain percentage of recycled materials. This will show students the positive and useful result of what happens when we do recycle while demonstrating the final step in the process.
The Environmental Protection Agency provides curriculum resources, including a glossary of terms and a program titled "The Quest For Less," which contains useful and entertaining activities to help children understand the basics of recycling. Additionally, you could start a recycling program in your school if one does not already exist. Students will learn more about recycling by physically executing the process themselves, all while making a real difference in their community.