Young students are more aware than ever about the importance of being environmentally friendly and taking real steps to reduce everyone’s carbon footprints. They are taught sustainability as part of their school curriculum and so there is no point in teaching them from books if the teachers are not going to actually show them how to be more eco-friendly in real life. Many schools set up an environment where children can actually see plastics, glass and paper being separated on school grounds in order to be taken for recycling later.

One way to teach children about sustainability is to take them on School travel to a recycling plant for example to actually let them see their hard work in action. They get a much better sense of what actually happens in the recycling process and it helps them to understand it better. All children should be aware of how to make their school more sustainable and eco-friendly and the following are just some ideas that you as a teacher might want to put into practice.

• Create active learning – As was mentioned briefly before, there is only so much that you can teach your kids from books before you actually have to show them the environment. It’s much easier for them to understand about sustainable travel, pollution and climate change if you use the things around you to drive the learning home. You can talk to them about how the school takes care of its rubbish and what it is doing to become more eco-friendly place to learn at.
• Create a recycling area – Hopefully the school already has is in place but if it doesn’t, then this is the perfect opportunity for you to create a recycling routine for your students. You can teach them about repurchasing certain items that can be used around the classroom and you can also get them to create works of art from pieces of plastic and other things that they would usually throw away.
• Start reusing paper – Many schools just use one side of paper while the other side is just left blank. You can teach your children about the importance of using paper again before discarding it for a recycling.

These are just three ideas that could be easily put into practice in any school environment and there are numerous more. You might even want to think about setting up a composting area were students get to learn about CO2 and the chemicals that damage the atmosphere.