Help Your Child's School and the Environment: My Daily Practices

It is a relatively simple thing to begin to keep your eyes out for ways to help your school and recycle. Below are a few of the ways we help our school and the environment as well.

Our local elementary school has a program where for every ink cartridge you donate, they get a small amount from the company they send them to. They make a nice amount from these donations (not enough to air condition the school....but enough for some "extras" in the classrooms) and it's a lot more convenient to send the cartridges to school with my son than to drive clear across town to STAPLES and donate there. That's especially true these days with the rising cost of gas! It's one way we can help out the school and eliminate extra waste in the process. thanks for reminding me....I need to box up some stuff to take to school the first week, my old cartridges will be on top of the stack!

Another way you can recycle and help the school at the same time is to keep those little cups that pudding and fruit come in, wash them out well and donate them to your child's art room. Not only are they the perfect size for each child to have their own little container, but because they are small. If one happens to be spilled, the mess is minimal and is easily cleaned up. They also stack very well one inside the other so a great number of them can be stored in a relatively small area.

One other way to recycle for your child's school is to keep your heavier duty plastic bags from your shopping trips and donate them to the school. TARGET bags generally work best for donations as they are a large size with sturdy handles but other stores may have some durable bags as well. Teachers always need bags to send home educational materials, wet socks or even assignments, so the bags will be used faster than you would ever believe. To store the bags, I use a large tissue box that has been emptied. I begin stuffing the box with the bags and give the box to the school when it is full. The opening provides nice access to the bags and oftentimes the boxes are very decorative, far too nice to throw away. By using them in this manner, they get a second life as well and they decorate the classroom at the same time.