How to Reduce Classroom Waste

Seven hours a day, five days per week, students and teachers spend in the classroom. That generates a lot of garbage. Every weekday evening janitors empty classroom garbage cans and prepare for the next school day by lining the empty trash cans with fresh plastic liners. If we want all our school children to learn to be environmentally conscious, educators need to teach students how to be eco-friendly, beginning in the classroom.

The principles used to reduce home waste also work in the classroom setting.

The best way to reduce waste is not to produce it in the first place. Other ways to reduce home waste that might also be effective, in some measure, in a school classroom include:

1. Borrowing or renting items or resources that are not used often

2. Buying better quality or more durable products that you maintain or repair as needed

3. Using cloth toweling and napkins that can be laundered instead of disposables

4. Using washable party dishes in neutral colors that fit with most holiday themes

5. Buying in bulk to avoid excess small container as waste or excess packaging

6. Organizing saved things like rubber bands and small scraps of paper

7. Purchasing products incorporating the least amount of packaging

8. Purchasing product packages that serve other uses

9. Getting off junk mail lists

10. Recycling classroom glass, aluminum, paper, and plastics

11. Using rechargeable batteries in the classroom

12. Donating unwanted classroom items to other classroom teachers

13. Purifying or bottling water in the classroom

14. Composting any safe compost materials in a classroom or school compost bin

Being eco-friendly in the classroom means borrowing when you can, buying in quantity, using classroom storage bins to store quantity purchases, reusing consumables in creative new ways, saving and using what you once easily discarded, and keeping your classroom well-organized. It also means having access to recycle bins--either in the classroom or someplace on the school property.

Ultimately, teachers need to be eco-friendly role models in the classroom. A wise teacher needs to think twice before buying classroom supplies and before tossing anything into the garbage can or school dumpster. Our landfills are stuffed, and our trash problems continue to escalate. We need better management of our waste, and we need our youngest citizens to learn care for environment from teachers who demonstrate care.

If you're a classroom teacher, these tips will help you find ways to cut down on your classroom waste, and in the process, help your classroom make a greener imprint.