Waste Reduction

Schools generate a lot of waste. Fortunately, there are ways to both catalyze student leadership AND reduce landfill loads. You and your students can start exploring where your school’s waste comes from. Once you identify the challenges to reducing your waste – maybe it’s ensuring recyclables find the right bin or repurposing one- sided paper – it is easy to take the next steps! From G.O.O.S paper and boomerang lunches, to completing the nutrient cycle with school-wide composting and planting a simple garden, we can reduce waste in schools.

A great Guiding Question from Canada EcoSchools is, how does your school make decisions and follow daily routines and operational practices that significantly reduce its impact on the environment through waste reduction? Want to understand the scale of the challenge AND best practices for Waste Management? Check out the resource to the right!

Start by meeting Community Climate Hero – Jill Bishop and explore how waste reduction and growing food connect to Climate Action. Use the Kahoot quiz to test your knowledge, activity sheets, and check out our amazing resources.

Making the Connection

Resources4Rethinking includes a number of activities that explore the concept of zero waste and how nature may provide direction in moving us to a zero-waste society. It also helps students distinguish between organic and inorganic waste and how they might reduce the pressure on landfills.

Celebrate Peterborough Students who led a water conservation project at their school by clicking on the Monsignor O’Donaghue case study!

Follow Jill Bishop to the Nourish greenhouse in the ‘Plant, Tend and Harvest Something You Can Eat’ video to see how you can plant, tend to and harvest your own food in any season.

Follow Karen O’Krafka in the Landmark 20 Plan an Environmental Project – video to conduct and evaluate at least two of: plan and map a local day trip, follow a local stream, plan and manage a school recycling or composting project, conduct a repair café, help to care for a living thing, and research a personal care or fashion product that interests you.