Live Exploration: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Explore how things are the same and how they are different as you compare and contrast information with videos and text (and a slimy snail!) Play recycling games, read secret ‘snail trail’ messages, and learn why we must reduce our landfills.

In this lesson plan, students learn about the value renewable resources hold for our society and the broader community of living things. They expand their understanding of two important conservation activities we can engage in: recycling and composting.

Peg, Cat and Neighbor Lady Viv sort and recycle junk left behind in the field. After watching this video, kids should be more familiar with sorting and understand how important recycling is.

What goes into creating an efficient water filter? Is is possible to create a fun, engaging game out of recycled material? With a little help from Jet and his friends Sidney, Sean, and Mindy, your students will discover that there are many different ways they can live more sustainable lives through reusing old things.

By practicing the reducing, reusing and recycling, we can cut our trash by significant amounts and lower our impact on landfills and the planet.

In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, cast members demonstrate how something that might otherwise be discarded, such as newspaper, can be recycled to create a functional or even beneficial new product.

This activity, presented by SciGirls, teaches students how to reduce waste, and what happens to the environment when we don't recycle.

If you’re an “average American,” you produce about 4.4 pounds of trash per day (the global per person average is 2.6 pounds). The good news is that the average American also now composts and recycles about 1.5 pounds per day. But our recycling still lags far behind other developed countries—and many undeveloped ones. Recycling Across America has a simple plan: to get everyone on the country on the same recycled page so we understand it and can do it better!

Did you know that fabric is a major component of landfills? One woman looked at the problem of wasted fabric and challenges for refugee women in her community and came up with a creative idea to help with both. See how Peace of Thread promotes economic stability and cultural understanding while reducing waste and making life beautiful.

Jennifer Chua is a 25-year-old packaging engineer who works at Method, a company in San Francisco that specializes in nontoxic, biodegradable products. Jennifer makes high-quality products that are both good-looking and good for the environment. Learn more in this video from Design Squad Nation.

Plastics can be made in almost any shape for almost any purpose. They don’t biodegrade, they just break into smaller and smaller pieces. And this is a problem. Plastics smaller than 5mm are called microplastics. They’re pieces of a plastic item that has broken apart, microbeads found in face washes, pre-production plastic beads called “nurdles,” and microfibers.

How many different plastic items do you use in a day? How many of these are disposable or single-use? How do you think our reliance on plastic affects the Earth?

Around the world, waves of plastic are washing ashore and clogging landfills. Even though plastic pollution is now one of the largest environmental threats facing humans and animals, our appetite for the virtually indestructible material keeps growing.

Around the world, waves of plastic are washing ashore and clogging landfills. Even though plastic pollution is now one of the largest environmental threats facing humans and animals, our appetite for the virtually indestructible material keeps growing.