Did You Know?

Recycle Fun & Games For The Kids

www.epa.gov/recyclecity	Recycle City
Children and adults will be delightedly educated by a visit to this unique site offered by the Environmental Protection Agency ’s San Francisco office. It’s really fun to play the game. You will learn all about recycling, and keeping your neighborhood clean at the same time!

Planet Protectors Club for Kids

Be a Planet Protector! As a Planet Protector, your mission is to improve the world around you by making less trash. Planet Protectors also help other people learn to reduce, reuse, and recycle. To carry out this mission, check out the fun activities and games below. The more you learn about reducing wastes and saving resources, the better you become at carrying out the Planet Protector goals http://www.epa.gov/waste/education/kids/planetprotectors/index.htm

Activities Case of the Broken Loop (PDF) (12 pp, 824K) | En Español (PDF) (12 pp, 744K) Follow That Trail! (PDF) (12 pp, 1.3MB) | En Español (PDF) (12 pp, 2.7MB) Planet Protectors Create Less Waste In the First Place (PDF) (12 pp, 404K) | En Español (PDF) (12 pp, 396K) Trash and Climate Change (PDF) (11 pp, 399K) | En Español (PDF) (10 pp, 419K) Planet Protectors Coloring Book Applet Games Environauts Mission to Earth HTML popups Detective Training Hidden Hints Materials Lineup P.I. in the Sky Education Resources Educational Materials Home This site provides a wealth of materials for teachers, kids, students, and researchers to develop an increased knowledge of solid waste issues. These resources are intended to increase environmental awareness and inspire participation in environmental activities. Students of all ages will find fun activities and project ideas to learn more about waste reduction, reuse, and recycling. This site also provides information sources, tools, and data to enable student researchers to collect environmental information for use in projects and reports. Teachers will find curriculum, activities, games, and other educational materials to teach students about waste generation and management. Student award and grant information is also provided, as well as information about environmental careers. RCRA (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act) Training at your Desktop provides both introductory and more advanced courses for federal and state regulators, the regulated community, organizations, associations, and even consumers who are interested in environmental laws and regulations and their implementation. Kids (K-5) Be a Planet Protector and help make the earth a cleaner place to live! You can make a difference by reducing the amount of garbage that you throw away. Learn how to recycle and reuse materials at school and at home. Students (6-8) Almost everyday, all of us throw away trash. As you can probably imagine, this adds up to a lot of garbage! When trash, also know as solid waste, is taken to landfills, it sits for years and years—and we are quickly running out of places to put it all. That's why it is important for all of us to discover creative ways at home and at school to generate less waste. The following resources provide interesting information and ideas to help you make a difference in reducing the amount of waste that is created everyday! Teens (9-12) Your Environment. Your Choice. A lot of what you do everyday creates waste—even driving your car! Have you ever wondered about what happens to the used oil that is drained from your car? Or, that old cell phone in your closet that you just replaced? Have you ever thought about what you could have done with it? The following resources will help you find solutions to solid waste problems that we all face You will need Adobe Reader to view some of the files on this page. See EPA's PDF page to learn more.

Did You Know?

"Wow!"
"Look at this moutian of plastic bottles!"

The California Bottle Bill now includes more types of containers than ever before!

• Un-recycled beverage containers last year would circle the earth almost seven times.
• More than six billion recyclable plastic beverage containers were thrown away last year
  instead of being recycled. The CRV (California Refund Value) for these un-recycled containers
  represented over $150 million.
• Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run your television for three hours.
• Recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours.

What is Recycling?

Unknown Author

Most people are familiar with the word recycling. But sometimes we forget that it means more than just throwing the odd pop can into a recycling box.

What does recycling mean?

Recycling is a multi-stage process that describes:

Have you seen this symbol before? It's called a mobius loop (pronounced: mo-bi-us) and it is recognized around the world. Each arrow stands for the 3 main components of the recycling system:

Imagine each arrow supplying goods or materials to the next one. If one arrow stops doing its job, waste will result. It's the continuous cycle that makes the recycling system work.

Is recycling the only answer?

We all know the benefits of recycling, but remember the 3 R's? Well, recycling is the 3rd 'R' - after reduce and reuse! Recycling is a great thing to do. Of course, it also uses energy and produces waste. For example: think of the fuel that is burned by all the trucks that collect and transport recyclable materials, the heat (energy) needed to melt plastic and aluminum for remanufacturing, and the sludge that results from newspaper de-inking.

So, keep on recycling ... but do these things first:

Reduce the amount of waste you generate. We can ask ourselves some important questions before we buy something new:

Consuming less is still the best way to reduce waste and minimize pollution.

Watch out for packaging

Buy environmentally-friendly products.

Stay informed!

Close the loop by buying recycled products.

We can all do our part by putting things into our blue box at home and participating in a school or community recycling program. We can Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. And when we decide we really do need to buy a new product, we can look for recycled content and help close the recycling loop.

Thanks for visiting