What You Can Do In the Community
to Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle

You can save fifteen trees by recycling one ton of newspapers! And did you know that from the time you recycle an aluminum can it takes only sixty days before it's back on a store's shelf?

 
  • Write letters to the newspapers to increase awareness about the 3R's (reducing, reusing, and recycling).
  • Write letters to your mayor about reducing, reusing, and recycling.
  • Write letters to your mayor and ask him or her to put up binsClothes recycling bin around town for things that can be recycled.
  • Make posters to put up around your town to ask people to reduce, reuse and recycle.
  • Send out flyers to your neighbors and ask them to put out anything that can be reused on a certain day.  Then on that day you and your friends and family can come and pick up the items and bring them to a local charity.
  • Send out a flyer to your neighbors and ask them to put out anything that can be recycled on a certain day.  Then ask your friends and family to help you pick them up and bring them to a recycling center.
  • Ask your town’s public officials to hold an Earth Day Celebration in April to create more awareness for the need to reduce, reuse, and recycle.  This could also be done as a fair that shows displays of recycled products and the positive results of recycling.
  • Ask people at any place you go (church, club, YMCA, business, stores) if they could start recycling activities at their buildings.
  • Call a local university or environmental affairs office to learn more about recycling programs at their locations.  Decide if you could use some of their ideas in your school, home etc.
  • Encourage your parents’ workplaces, your organizations, clubs etc. to use recycled materials if they don’t already do so.
  • Call or write to local newspapers, television stations, or radio stations and ask them to “cover” or report on one of the 3R’s activities that you are doing in your home, school or club (e.g. Scouts).  When people hear about what you are doing, they may be inspired to do similar things.
  • Do a “Green Audit” at different locations in your community. “Green” stands for the earth we are trying to save, and an "audit" means doing an investigation.  You could go to different places such as a park, pool, mall, library, zoo, etc. and observe and ask questions about if they are doing the 3R’s.  Once you do your investigation, talk to or write letters to the people in charge of these locations and ask them to fix any problems you may have found.

|Global Warming In the Community| |The 3Rs In the Community|
|Solar Energy In the Community| |Water In the Community|
|Trees In the Community| |Electricity In the Community|
|Bald Eagles| |Gorillas| |Komodo Dragons| |Lions| |Orangutans| |Rhinoceros| |Timber Wolves| |Whooping Cranes|

Books and Magazines

Blashfield, Jean F. and Wallace B. Black. Recycling. Chicago: Children’s Press, 1991.

The Earth Works Group. 50 Simple Things Kids Can do to Recycle.
Berkley: Earth Works Press, 1994.

The Earth Works Group. 50 Simple Things Kids Can do to Save the Earth. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel-A Universal Press Syndicate Company, 1990.

Elkington, John, Julia Hailes, Douglas Hill and Joel Makower. Going Green-A Kid’s Handbook to Saving the Planet. New York: The Penguin Group, 1990.

Kalbacken, Joan and Emilie U. Lepthien. Recycling. Chicago: Children’s Press Inc., 1991.

Images

Permission to use the photograph of the recycling center on this page is granted  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page> (December, 2006).

Permission to use the picture of the recycling clothes bin in granted by M. Wallander for USAgain.com in an email received on 20 March 2007.

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