 Recycling isn’t just for cans and plastic bags. You can raise money for your school and recycle a wide variety of items at the same time. Many non-profit organizations can help you to organize fundraisers for ink cartridge or cell phone recycling drives. These non-profit organizations, like Funding Factory, help with organizing and advertising your event. They’ll give you flyers, posters, drop off signs, and other promotional materials.
Other ways to raise money for your school with recycling programs depend on your area. In Texas, H-E-B grocery stores offer schools about $1 per pound of grocery bags. Those bags are then turned into trash bags (Enviro-Bags) that can be purchased at the grocery stores.
Even if you just stick to recycling the typical items, like paper, plastic, and aluminum, you can still make money for your school and reduce the impact on the environment. Your school will be happy to get on board, since trash disposal budgets are greatly reduced through recycling programs.
Many recycling programs also offer an opportunity to buy back your recycled goods in the form of new products, like plastic park benches, picnic tables, or playground equipment. With the added revenue that your school will have, you could even celebrate Earth Day with an outdoor party with prizes and awards for your best recyclers.
To further encourage participation at your school, have your profits shared throughout the school during your weekly or monthly announcements. It’s a fun way for children, and teachers, to see the difference they’re making.
Think out of the box to determine what other things your school can recycle. Recycling comes in many forms, from the conventional bins that take aluminum, plastic, and paper, to the more unique forms, like a school-wide yard sale or recycling old clothing. School-wide yard sales are great because families can bring their unwanted goods to the school grounds and let the faculty and children do the rest of the work. The schools benefit, too, since they get the money raised from selling the goods. Everyone involved benefits because these items are reused (preventing more use of raw materials and energy to create new items) and the purchased items don’t go into a landfill, which means that everyone involved lowers their carbon footprint.
With the money ] your school earns through recycling programs, consider making more eco-friendly changes, such as purchasing hand dryers instead of paper for restrooms. You could also purchase compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs to replace old bulbs.
In conjunction with a recycling program, schools should also consider adding environmental topics to their curricula to expand on the ideas behind recycling and why recycling matters. One recent poll found that 60% of children participate in recycling at home, but only 20% of those children could identify reasons to recycle or what kind of difference it makes. Recycling is important not only in action but in theory.
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