From snack packages to worn-out tires and nuclear waste, people keep generating trash! Let’s all do our share to help stop waste with the three R’s.

• 1.

  Did you know that people in the United States throw away an average of 3.5 lbs (1.59 kg) of trash every day? Where does it all go? What happens to nuclear waste from energy plants? How about all the tires that are removed from the world’s cars each year?

• 2.

  How to help solve this problem? People can follow the three R's: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. What can you do to reduce waste? With Crayola Erasable Colored Pencils on white paper, list items you, your families, and your classmates can reuse or recycle, such as glass, paper, or plastic. Find out where the landfills and recycling plants are in your community.

• 3.

  What part of this issue captures your imagination? If it’s reuse, maybe one solution is a toy or CD/DVD swap? What about walking to the library more, or reusing your own fabric grocery bags? How can you convince others to follow the three R’s? Use Crayola Markers on white paper to get your point across with a dramatic sign or poster.

• 4.

  Now it’s time to stop waste! Find prominent places in your community to display your posters. Generate a commitment to a cleaner community!

Standards

• LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.
• LA: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.
• LA: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.
• VA: Use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories.
• VA: Use visual structures of art to communicate ideas.

Adaptations

• Invite a local authority to visit with the class to discuss what your community is doing to help reduce, reuse, and recycle. What is expected of the residents in the plan? How does the community's plan look to the future? After the meeting, students post learning to a class blog.
• Encourage students to investigate a tragedy such as Love Canal in New York or Russia's Chernobyl catastrophe. Students sketch a scene from the disaster and write a summary paragraph of how the disasters happened. A second paragraph focuses on how these disasters might have been prevented.
• "Pre-cycling" is a practice in which product designers and manufacturers create packaging that considers recycling. Students investigate how this works, what major companies are practicing pre-cycling, and brainstorm how they, as consumers, can influence companies to practice pre-cycling.