Teaching Your Child to Recycle in Whitfield County and Dalton Schools
/Whitfield County Schools and Dalton Public Schools are both back in the swing of things now, so it is the perfect time to make sure your child knows how to recycle at school and review why it’s important.
Every day it becomes more important that we teach future generations how and why to recycle. Luckily, all K through 12 schools in Whitfield County and Dalton take part in the Target Recycling at School (TRS), a program of the Dalton-Whitfield Solid Waste Authority. This gives students the option of recycling at school. Through this program, your child can recycle with confidence and learn from a young age that even simple choices can make a huge difference.
Valley Point students posing with their certificate for being the first place Middle School winner
Children can often pick up new habits quickly and are usually empathetic to people and animals around them. This makes them great recyclers! As long as they know how recycling paper can help us cut down less trees and keep more homes and resources available for animals they can connect their habit to the bigger picture. Teaching recycling is a great way to help them understand how little actions by a large group of people can make a big difference in the world around us. Sign up for the school email at https://eepurl.com/YEEM to get the monthly recycling totals for your school!
To begin recycling, they have to learn some basic concepts first. Knowing what the recycling symbol, the triangle with three arrows, looks like and knowing what paper products should be recycled are the two most important things to know that they can learn even before school starts.
Use one of our free Recycling Ben worksheets online at https://www.dwswa.org/mascot-recycling-ben to learn about recycling through matching games, a word search, or a coloring sheet! Get hands on with your learning by doing a scavenger hunt around the house. Have them quickly search for five things made out of paper they can recycle in 5 minutes or less. Children struggle the most with remembering that paperboard tubes, like toilet paper rolls, and paperboard boxes, cereal boxes, can be recycled in the paper bin.
It helps to practice at home first so they can feel confident about recycling in front of their peers.
Remind your student that it is okay to ask questions when they get to school. They may need to ask where the recycling bin or can is and what all the teacher collects.
When you drive through the parking lot, look for sky-blue colored cans outside of the school where you can drop off paper recycling for your kid or have them look inside the school for containers by asking school teachers and administration. Each school is in control of how recyclables are collected in the school so the recycling bins may look different from school to school or even classroom to classroom.
Especially passionate students may be interested in joining the recycling or eco club at their school or even starting one! These groups help encourage or collect recycling in the school. This can help their school one of the winners of the recycling contest that is held throughout the year and announced in April. Schools that place in the top two and the most improved school are awarded a prize that benefits the entire school. Winners of the Target Recycling at School program are calculated by how many pounds per student are recycled.
In the 2021-2022 Target Recycling at Schools contest, 35 schools recycled 411,270 pounds altogether. The top schools for 2021-22 in the elementary school category were Learning Tree School in first place, Dug Gap in second place and Westside for most improved. For middle schools, the winners were Valley Point in first place and Christian Heritage in second place and most improved. For high schools, Northwest Whitfield was first place, Coahulla Creek was second and most improved.
Is your school on this list from last year? Help your school win this year by teaching your child the how and why of recycling at home this week. They are never too young to start making a difference!