Sustainability in the Classroom

Last semester we were asked to pick an inquiry on a topic related to education and my topic was environmental sustainability in the classroom.  Environmental sustainability is defined as the exploration between the social, economic and environmental factors for the well-being of all species and the earth in the future. I feel that it is important to give students the opportunity to understand how and why the environment has an impact on their lives and what kind of impact their lives have on the environment.

In the environmental sustainability inquiry, I looked at the ways that the subject of environmental sustainability can be incorporated into all areas of the curriculum and First Peoples Principles. I also looked at field trip ideas for students and resources.

Now that I have been researching zero-waste lifestyles I have been thinking about classroom waste and the connections between my previous inquiry. I don’t think that a zero-waste approach would be entirely successful in an elementary classroom, but as mentioned in my previous blog post, I think finding small achievable goals would be useful. Here is a list of ways that I would like to reduce waste in my future classroom:

  1. Bike and Walk to School: Encourage students/staff to walk or bike to school if an option. I believe Victoria has a Bike to School/Work Week, but I think everyone could be encouraged to do this more often. I also think having students on some sort of class wide reward system on this would work well.
  2. Staff: I think that having a discussion with staff on ways to cut down paper could be helpful. I am surprised to know that teachers still send out paper notices to parents instead of by e-mail. Not only do children often lose or damage these papers, I feel that sending an e-mail would be more time effective and help reduce waste!
  3. Reuse: Finding ways to reuse the waste collected in classroom for art projects would be one helpful way to avoid items being sent to the landfill!
  4. Use a class set of reusable plates, cutlery and cups: Class parties or birthday parties can create a lot of waste with disposable items. Finding a cheap set of tableware from a thrift store or asking parents to donate items would help reduce disposable items. I also like the idea of getting students to take turns washing and drying dishes, as it creates responsibility and the importance of cleanup.
  5. Lamination: I don’t know how often I will need to laminate in my future classroom, but I will be making an effort to reconsider if lamination is necessary. Laminated paper cannot be recycled, so I think that this could potentially be a huge waste if you are laminating resources that students won’t use in the future. I also found an idea from a zero-waste teacher influencer who asks parents to donate empty cereal boxes and if she wants materials to last a long time, she will glue them to the back of the cardboard.