Calling all environmentally-conscious educators! Register now to participate in Recycling Week 2024!
is Aotearoa New Zealand's largest national campaign for education on recycling and waste minimisation. The week promotes education and awareness of better recycling habits and ways of contributing to a waste-free future in Aotearoa.
Participation is free and self-directed – you know your school best, so while they provide ideas, inspiration and information (as well as access to webinars, quizzes and prizes), it's entirely up to you to decide what activities to do.
Running Recycling Week in your school is an easy and fun way to promote education on waste and recycling to students and staff.
In 2024 we are going back to basics when it comes to waste minimisation. This year's theme focuses on the first step of any waste minimisation journey. Whether this is your first or eleventh Recycling Week, to successfully kickstart your waste minimisation journey you need to: Understand your waste. Only through full understanding of the problem can a sustainable solution be achieved.
There are 3 different ways to get involved in Recycling Week: Basic, Classic, Pro. By selecting a programme you will receive tailored resources and instructions on how to bring Recycling Week to life in a way that works for your organisation.
If you and/or your school are interested in taking part in Recycling Week, see www.reclaim.co.nz/recycling-week or contact sustainability@reclaim.co.nz.
Related Content
These resources support students in levels 1–4 with learning about waste and recycling.
Read these Connected articles:
- Turning old into new – discover where plastics and other materials come from and how we can minimise our ecological footprint.
- Down the drain – see how students in Petone, Lower Hutt, took action to prevent rubbish from entering their local marine environment.
When we throw something away, how do we know where ‘away’ is? The Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge is developing online tools to help us find out. Ocean Plastic Simulator is an interactive computer simulation that shows where plastic is likely to end up when it is dropped in the ocean.
Plastic is a wicked problem. It’s incredibly useful, but it’s also a huge environmental issue. A helpful resource is Thinking about plastic – planning pathways which includes our interactive planning pathway – use this to begin a cross-curricular look at plastics.
Discover more about Waste management in New Zealand and about the structure of landfills
We have curated information from the Building Science Concepts Book 60 Rubbish: How Do We Deal with It? for use in the early to middle primary years.
The article Material World – Recycling and biodegradability curates Hub resources into the following topics:
- The issue of waste
- Modern landfill systems
- Biodegradability, recycling and reuse
- Plastic recycling
Activity ideas
These activities look at the issue of waste in our local environments: Looking at modern landfill systems (this includes the interactive Modern landfill systems) and Label the landfill.
Thinking about landfills is a ready-to-use cross-curricular student worksheet for NZC levels 4–5. It does not require internet access – making it suitable for students working away from a school setting.
In the activity Plastic – reuse, recycle or rubbish game, students sort plastic items into three categories: reuse, recycle and rubbish. The game encourages students to observe and consider how they use and reuse plastics in their everyday lives. Follow up with DIY plastic recycling plant, the plastic items used in the previous activity can be reused in this one.
Determining the properties of plastic and glass explores similarities and differences in properties of recycling materials with your younger students.
Citizen science
Planning for students to be citizen scientists provides pedagogical support for educators interested in contributing to an online citizen science project. Below are a range of ciizen science projects related to the issue of rubbish.
- Backyard Battle and Mizuiku Upstream Battle are two citizen science projects run by Keep New Zealand Beautiful. The aim is to collect and audit litter to help provide a better understanding of the pathways and root causes of pollution in Aotearoa. This case study details how a similar project was used with students in year 2–4.
- Participate in Sustainable Coastlines' beach litter citizen science project Litter Intelligence. Litterati is a similar project, but is international . It allows participants to photograph, upload and tag litter in their own area.
- Global Earth Challenge is another international project with a section on plastic pollution.
