Students complete recycling activities to learn how ordinary garbage can create a living organism. For this recycling lesson, students take a combination of seeds from used fruits. Students water and grow the plants from the recycled seeds.

Students find a piece of trash and make a useful item out of it. They show awareness of the environmental concerns of the earth.

Students define trash, garbage, or solid waste, discuss ways of disposing of trash, list examples of biodegradable materials, and have trash relay race in order to sort trash into appropriate containers labeled biodegradable, reusable,...

Students identify how different cultures deal with the challenge of trash. Read an excerpt from a chapter book based on real life written from the Southern Indian perspective. Describe the life of a street child in Southern India....

Fifth graders explore the concept of waste management. For this recycling lesson, 5th graders discover the history of waste management and discuss how the U.S. should respond to the issue of ever-increasing waste.

Learners examine how to reduce trash to help the environment. In this environment lesson, students listen to the story, The Wartville Wizard, before thinking about how they can reduce trash. They decide why it is important to reduce...

In this trash reduction worksheet, students determine what can be done to reduce the amount of trash that is produced in the cafeteria during lunch. They count the number of garbage bags, bags of cans, and bags of glass. They analyze...

Greeting cards can be cute or pretty, and they end up in the trash. Turn your old greeting cards into a functional box. Learners fold, cut, and tape old cards to create small boxes that are perfect for holding paperclips, erasers, or...

Students brainstorm and share opinions about products that can be reused or recycled after reading the article, "Seattle's Recycling Success Is Being Measured in Scraps." They then investigate, analyze and evaluate articles on recycling...

Does everything in the trash can belong there? Conduct a waste audit with your class by collecting a day's worth of garbage, separating it into recyclables, non-recyclables, or food waste, and properly distributing what they find into...

In this history of garbage worksheet, learners read about the history of garbage from prehistoric times through the 1900s. Students learn about the how waste is managed in Palm Beach County.

Youngsters discover what recycling is and identify things that can be recycled. They use both video and Internet resources to aid them in their study. This is a well-designed lesson with excellent activities and a nicely-written letter...

Here is a fascinating human geography study of the Zabbaleen. They are a sub-class of people who work as garbage collectors in Cairo, Egypt. I can't say enough good things about this resource in my limited space here. It is fabulous! If...

Students make puppets from recycled materials. In this puppetry and recycling instructional activity, students investigate different types of puppets and their uses. They make puppets using mostly recycled materials such as old socks,...

Students participate in an ABC game based on recycling. For this recycling lesson, students sort objects into bins based on the first letter of each object. Students discuss the community and how to improve recycling.

Students compose songs about recycling. In this ecology lesson plan, students use vocabulary and concepts related to recycling to generate lyrics for an original song. Students construct musical instruments out of discarded materials.

Second graders develop a plan to recycle trash. In this environmental science lesson plan, 2nd graders sketch their invention and construct it. They present the final product in class.

Students explore how waste disposal has changed over time and what the current issues are.  In this disposal lesson students collect data and create graphs.

Students investigate data about America's trash production. In this environmental lesson, students use statistics about what we throw away to create an art pie chart project called a "trash pizza."

First graders examine the human environmental impact and discover ways to lessen effects. They create a pollution damage flow chart and write down what they think Mother Earth might say. They create inventions from recyclable materials.

Learners use the mathematics of surface area to approach the problem of garbage pollution from the classroom. After watching a video, students construct replicas of cereal boxes and compute their surface area.

Students examine the process of recycling by creating a mock television commercial about recycling. In this recycling lesson, students watch an animated demonstration about recycling and answer content questions. Students play an online...