Vision

Our vision was to recycle waste that would normally go to a landfill.

Action

Students organized a Clothing Swap for students in the school as well as new recycling initiatives for the staff partnered with TerraCycle.

Reflection & Celebration

When students arrived at school this year they were introduced to the recycling program at Leila North. Currently, we recycle batteries and writing utensils on top of the regular recycling materials. After learning about a company called TerraCycle students chose to add dental hygiene products to our recycling program. Along with that campaign students also chose to run a clothing swap to save unwanted clothes from the landfill. Students created a presentation and had an assembly for the whole school to introduce their initiatives.

Teachers and students were asked to donate and unwanted clothes. The clothing swap took a long time to collect clothes and with a couple of in school problems (one being the roof leaking and flooding the school) it was postponed a couple times but eventually was a success. Many students got new outfits. Some of the leftovers were donated to Value Village while others were kept to run another mini clothing swap in the October.

Recycling oral hygiene products proved to be very challenging as most students at the school felt uncomfortable bringing in their oral hygiene products to school. We were able to set up a recycling center in the staffroom and encouraged the staff to recycle these type of products. In choosing to set up the recycling center in the staffroom students chose to add more things they knew they could recycle with TerraCycle including Babybell wrappers, Boom Chica Pop Bags, Shaving products, Swiffer products, Febreeze products and more.

After attending the Climate Action for Youth Forum the group of students reported back to the class and we came up with the idea of going to other schools to present our new recycling initiatives. We sent emails to other administrators and had 2 schools interested in hearing our presentation. Unfortunately, students didn’t get an opportunity to present to those schools because of scheduling conflicts. Students know that there are other schools interested and they still want to make a difference by encouraging other schools to start new or more recycling programs. They plan on making pamphlets and sending letters to their previous teachers to see if they can get other schools on board with any type of new recycling program that fits their class or school.

Students identified reducing waste as the most important act they could take in helping with climate change but thought new recycling programs would be easier for other schools to adopt and they wanted to make it easy for the other schools so that it would be more likely that they would actually take action.

With the $500 funds from Learning for a Sustainable Future students chose to buy 2 Terra Cycle boxes in order to divert plastics from the landfill. They found that plastics are one of the worst polluters. They had planned to use the boxes in their presentation to show other schools other opportunities/ways to recycle as well. Students also want to reduce the amount of plastic that they bring in their lunch box but they found it hard to control that so they were happy there was another option.

Students were a little disappointed that they weren’t able to present to other schools but they still felt proud for the waste they were able to divert from the landfill. Most of their efforts were through free programs but they were very happy to have an option to recycle the plastics from their snacks.