Teaching young ones about sustainability can benefit the planet. After all, these students now will be the leaders of tomorrow. However, will they comprehend if you verbally define climate change and how it affects them?
Showing instead of telling may be a more effective approach. These 11 interesting eco-friendly projects for students can help educate them about planet protection. Take your pick and try it out with your students.
1. Upcycling Activities
Upcycling offers a creative way to repurpose waste and turn it into new, usable products. It’s a good strategy to teach kids how to give new life to discarded items like paper, bottles, or clothes.
It also instills a valuable lesson — it doesn’t take complicated means to protect the planet. One good example is turning egg cartons into colorful garlands that can be hung on walls. Here’s how to do it:
- Cut the egg carton into individual egg cups.
- Trim the edges on the top so they form like petals.
- Paint the egg cups with any color.
- Cut tiny holes at the bottom of those cups. Lacing the cups will transform them into a garland that can beautify their homes.
There are plenty of unique ways to upcycle waste. Choose a project that tickles their creative chops.
2. Tally Trips
Conventional transportation releases 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide yearly, contributing 41% of environmentally damaging emissions. Using electric cars can mitigate this impact, but let’s face it — not all students can drive and afford such a high-tech innovation.
Enter Tally Trips. This eco-friendly project allows students to quantify their carbon footprint by recording data on their mobility, such as using buses, trains, or private cars.
Driving a mile emits nearly half a pound of carbon dioxide for each passenger. A 20-mile drive generates 10 pounds of emissions released into the atmosphere. Students can use this data as a benchmark.
To calculate their carbon footprint, they need three things — the mode of transportation, number of passengers and distance traveled. Then, they can use an online carbon calculator to get the measurements. This action-driven activity is an excellent example of inspiring students to be proactive environmental stewards.
3. Waste Audit Challenge
A report found that US recycling processes have generated 526 million metric tons of recycled goods, diverting waste from landfills and incinerators. Like Tally Trips, this challenge’s goal is to make kids aware of how much waste is in the school’s trash can.
Your first step is to identify the goal of this program. Is it to determine how much garbage the school throws away on a day-to-day basis? Is it to gauge how effective your recycling strategy is in rerouting trash from landfills?
Ensure this waste audit is sanitary and efficient. Students will need a few tools for this activity:
- Disposable gloves
- Goggles
- Aprons
- Hand sanitizer
- Plastic tarp
- Weighing scale
- Sorting bins
- Small buckets
- Cleaning materials
Once these tools are secured, students can begin collecting, sorting, weighing, and estimating the volume of trash collected in the school. Ask the students to record their findings on a data sheet for evaluation.
This eco-friendly project for students can reveal if your recycling method is effective or needs improvement.
4. Community Garden
People are innately drawn to nature — a community garden is one of the best projects to harness this weakening human-environment connection due to the modern lifestyle. Starting a community garden can feel overwhelming, but it can be a source of joy for outdoorsy kids. It doesn’t have to be sizable — a small greenery will be perfect for little gardeners.
You’ll need a vacant lot around the school grounds with decent soil. The first step is to get administrator permission to ensure the school approves the idea.
Then, sit down for brainstorming sessions with parents, students, and the administration. Figure out how to structure the garden, what to plant, and how to maintain the crops.
Building a community garden is an excellent way to bring everyone together and teach children how to grow their own food.
5. Pollinator Habitat Creation
While a community garden encourages kids to be food-independent, creating a habitat for bees increases their awareness of the interconnectedness of various ecosystem elements.
Careful planning is the first step in building a pollinator garden. Choose your location and prep the garden. Raised beds will be easier for kids to maintain. Then, plant native flowers, shrubs, and trees.
Build a bee hotel and watch the garden grow with your students until it becomes a permanent home for flying creatures. Ensure students watch, water, and weed the garden.
Getting involved in such an activity will empower young ones to be environmentally responsible.
6. Energy Conservation Campaign
One exceptional example you can emulate at school is Earth Hour, a worldwide movement where everyone is encouraged to give an hour for Earth by switching off. Children may not yet understand why leaving the TV on for hours can harm the planet.
By initiating this project, teachers can instill energy-saving practices in kids — and consider it a crash course on social responsibility.
How can you run a switch-off campaign successfully? It doesn’t have to be like Earth Hour when you can power off appliances for 60 minutes, as it can be inconvenient. You’ll be surprised how implementing a simple unplug policy around the school grounds can be environmentally friendly.
First, explain to students everything that can be powered off. Some examples include lights, computers, printers, copiers, air conditioners, and heaters.
The implementation is simple: paste an unplug-when-not-in-use sign near outlets or switches so students can remember. This will train them to be proactive about minimizing needless energy use.
7. Water Conservation Challenge
Sustainable living entails conserving finite resources, especially vanishing water. Recent droughts, pipeline contamination and elevating demand have made this resource even more fragile.
A water conservation program is one of the best eco-friendly projects for students to try. Several methods allow you to put this project into action. For example, you can use a water-use tracking app or manually record each volume of usage.
More conveniently, you can install sub-meters in various school areas, like the kitchens, bathrooms and outdoor facilities. Then, assign one student team to look at the water meters and record the readings on a document or an app.
This activity will help ingrain water-saving habits in young minds. Additionally, it encourages them to report problems contributing to wastage during the challenge, such as leaks.
8. Eco-Friendly Art Exhibition
Teachers and parents can leverage their students’ artistic chops to raise awareness about environmental issues through an eco-friendly art display. They can make the event competitive by adding a twist to a traditional artwork creation process.
For instance, students can only use recycled materials or natural elements. They must use their imaginative skills to assemble something from materials not bought at stores.
Such an activity will boost their innovative and problem-solving skills. Wouldn’t you be excited about what they’ll make?
9. Sustainable Fashion Show
Tons of fabric dumped in landfills daily overwhelm the planet and cause pollution. A sustainable fashion show held on campus will help students realize that clothing is more of a need than a want, and buying only what’s necessary is an eco-friendly choice.
How can you go about this? Encourage students to showcase their fashion design skills by creating recycled or repurposed outfits. Set a rule to only use old or thrifted garments. Ask them to wear their creations to a school’s fashion event.
This event can educate students on why they should choose eco-friendly clothing.
10. Environmental Documentary Production
Technology has advanced rapidly enough that even beginners can learn to create a film. Today’s students are technologically driven. If they don’t know something, they can always search for and study it.
Creating a documentary film is an ingenious way to take advantage of this proficiency and drive awareness about an urgent necessity for climate action. Divide the class into groups since it involves researching, scripting, filming, and editing. Reward the team with the best output.
Watch this video from Earth Hour and share it with your students for inspiration.
11. Zero-Waste School Initiative
A zero-waste lifestyle has gone beyond individual pursuits. Now, academies aim to operate in a similar fashion by generating zero waste. This eco-friendly project for students can help them ritualize ecological lifestyle practices.
By implementing them in both homes and schools, they can turn these practices into a lifetime habit.
How can educational institutions achieve a zero-waste lifestyle? Three methods can turn this ambitious goal into reality:
- Reusing materials instead of buying new ones
- Reducing the materials used
- Recycling waste
Installing sorting stations is a central measure of this activity’s success. The recycling program will be more effective by segregating biodegradable from nonbiodegradable materials.
Containers with food scraps automatically go into compost, while those with paper, bottles, and plastics go to the nearest recycling facilities.
Conclusions
Sustainability isn’t rocket science. It’s easy to understand and implement. However, it may be challenging to ingrain environmental responsibility in young students. They may struggle to grasp why they must save water or electricity and segregate their waste.
The key to a more effective sustainability education is to make it fun. One strategy great educators use is gamification. Giving children green badges, trophies, and higher grades can increase their learning motivation.
These events also give them something to look forward to at school, instilling a sense of excitement and challenge for unmotivated kids.
Turning those tally trips, eco-friendly art exhibits, and sustainable fashion shows into a competition also increases participation. If kids know some rewards await the winners, they’re more likely to participate in these green activities.
Furthermore, a healthy rivalry can fuel their innovative skills and produce their most creative versions.
These eco-friendly projects offer creative ways to instill green practices in young minds. They’re easy to run and provide sufficient challenge for both gifted and uninterested students.
Try them out to make learning about a serious topic like climate change a little fun.
The young minds of today will be the scientists and problem-solvers of the future. Elementary schoolers may seem too young to learn about climate change, but this is when they’re most adaptable to positive practices. If they learn early, they’ll grow to be environmentally responsible individuals. Students can participate in several easy projects, such as recycling, water conservation challenges and energy-saving campaigns. Most may be familiar with these activities if their parents practice them at home. Building a community garden at school is one of the best examples of a project to protect nature. The plants, trees and shrubs provide a habitat for bees and butterflies and increase biodiversity in the area. Classroom activities like tallying trips, writing found object short stories, accessing local community wisdom, making homemade paint, and visiting recycling centers can help students understand and reduce their environmental impactFrequently Asked Questions
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