Find out what wastes are being generated by your class or grade within the school or by the whole school. This might be done by interviewing a janitor, by each member of a class keeping a record of everything thrown out in the course of a day, or by physically sorting and evaluating the whole school's trash for a day or a week. Any of these assessments in a school typically finds paper, cardboard, plastics, aluminum and steel cans and food scraps. The Environmental Protection Agency's "Tools to Reduce Waste in Schools" offers a procedure and forms for a full-scale waste sort in which all of the school's waste from a period of time is taken out of containers into piles for dry trash and wet garbage and further sorted on tarps into categories such as these and the piles measured by weight and volume.
Though each piece of paper may seem a small thing, taken with all the other pieces, it makes up the largest proportion by weight of municipal waste. It is almost always the largest category in a school's waste stream. Paper is also the thing most often recycled. Bring the issue home to students by counting the number of pieces of paper --- notebooks, textbooks, fliers to take home --- they handle each day. Discuss the difference between consumable and reusable textbooks. Bring a supply of paper grocery sack and discuss how often they are made from recycled consumer waste. Invite students to cover their textbooks with the bags to reuse them, and to recycle them again later.
Schools contribute heavily to the status of food as the second-largest category of waste in the municipal stream, whether they serve lunch or students bring their own. The Center for Ecoliteracy estimates an average elementary school generates 18,670 pounds of lunch trash per school year. The Environmental Protection Agency says food is the largest single component of trash ending up in landfills and incinerators.
Better managing the waste from your school can start small. A teacher can designate the large wastebasket in his room for recycling paper and a smaller one for real trash. Put a tray next to the printer for pages that have been used on only one side or in only a fraction of the available space, so they can be used for scratch paper, printing drafts, or making memo pads. The same principle might take a little more work with regard to food waste, which can be recycled by composting. Especially if you've joined the school gardening movement, a compost collection bin for apple cores and uneaten carrot sticks saves the school money.