Publish at May 26 2015 Updated May 02 2024
The school is a place where supplies are consumed on a daily basis, and it's also a place to educate students in eco-citizen behavior towards obsolescence and recycling. The teacher can trace the life cycle of products and plants, or open the eyes of pupils to encourage them to recover and transform the waste and obsolete objects that are increasingly present in our living spaces.
The objective will be a little different, but whether it's a combination of art and motor skills, or evoking the life of an object from its manufacture to its destruction, it's easy for teachers to tackle the subject in the classroom, as early as kindergarten. A number of websites offer teachers detailed information on recycling circuits.
For example, it's possible to make recycled paper with pupils, to understand the circuit through which waste passes. As France ranks 13th in Europe for waste sorting (below the European average), it's important to address these issues, especially as the French get lost in the various bins. Some classes even put this circuit into practice with their pupils to make this behavior automatic and participate in eco-citizenship from an early age.
The most obvious is undoubtedly the creative recycling offered to kindergarten classes. Gone are the 3kg salt dough necklaces around moms' necks, or the plaster cast to serve as a pocket opener or ashtray.
From now on, hijacking obsolete or used objects is part of the teaching approach itself. It's as much a question of helping young people develop fine motor skills, paint or glue correctly, as it is of broadening their point of view so that they no longer stop at the reality of the object's use, but at what can be done with it, how it can be adapted.
In addition to ideas from the ingenious minds of do-it-yourself teachers, it's also possible to draw on ideas from the web to combine recycling and learning. For example, a model car made from paper towel rolls, or a pencil holder made from toilet paper rolls, can take pride of place on a father's desk. For moms, nothing could be simpler: decorated camembert cans, yoghurt pots disguised as candle-holders, or bracelets and necklaces made from soda cans make artistic and practical gifts.
Learning while having fun is an effective method, especially since the time spent awake at school is often greater than that spent at home. The behaviors established during schooling (including peripheral time such as lunch break or after-school care) are fundamental in the transformation into little eco-citizens.
Learning how to sort waste and paper, and picking up litter, become basic gestures which, like the fight against waste at the canteen, will be good reflexes to take back to the family. These issues can also be incorporated into more traditional school curricula, such as composting in biology or chemistry, recycling in technology, or setting up an information campaign in French and IT.
This approach at school enables children who don't have a garden, for example, to get to grips with compost and its benefits, a behavior they may choose to adopt later on. Waste sorting is a habit to get used to, and the school seems a perfect vehicle for transmitting eco-citizenship.
Illustration: Photographee.eu - ShutterStock
The sources
Modeling head
http://www.teteamodeler.com/
DIY idea - Blue Marguerite
http://www.bluemarguerite.com/Loisirs-creatifs/tuto-6695-bracelet-en-capsules-de-canette.deco
French and waste sorting - France TV Info
http://www.francetvinfo.fr/france/tri-selectif-les-francais-se-perdent_884761.html
Recycling waste - Charlotte's class
http://laclassedecharlotte.eklablog.com/le-recyclage-des-dechets-a39488179
Sustainable development project with the 6E class: sorting and recycling - S. Bennour - Collège Jacque Daguerre
http://www.clg-daguerre-cormeilles.ac-versailles.fr/article1312.html
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