Be a Westchester County Board of Legislator's Recycling Ranger
The laws of Westchester County require that all schools and homes have recycling programs. You can help your school start or improve its recycling program or improve how you and your family recycle. The activities on this sheet will help you learn about recycling and can provide helpful recycling information to your classroom, school and home.
Awards will be presented by your county legislator, on April 5 to third grade students who participate in the Westchester County Board of Legislators’ Recycling Ranger program. Complete three of the projects below and turn in the Report sheet signed by a parent or guardian to your teacher by March 31 to qualify for a Recycling Ranger certificate and other awards.
Projects
1. | Develop a recycling plan for your classroom. Include a map of the room showing where the recycling bins should go. Also suggest anything that will encourage your classmates to recycle. |
2. | Make a list of items made from recycled plastic. There are things all around you at school and home made from plastics that had other uses before. Check these or other websites: www.plasticsresource.com (click “Recycled Products” and then “Directory”) and www.solidwaste.org/recplstc.htm. You will be surprised by these answers. |
3. | Keep a recycling log of how you have recycled for a week and how you have helped your family and school recycle. |
4. | Create a TV commercial for a product (real or make believe) that is environmentally “friendly” (good for the environment). Explain how it protects the environment and why people should buy your product. |
5. | Write a song or rap about recycling. |
6. | Plan a “no trash” lunch you can take to school. Neither the food nor the drink container should become trash at the end of the meal. Be creative!! |
7. | List 4 ways people could conserve (use less) paper. Two of these should be ones that could be used at school by students or teachers. |
8. | Prepare a list or draw pictures of items you use at school (office supplies) made from “recovered content” or recycled materials. (Use the websites from project 2 or see the helpful websites on the 2nd page.) |
9. | What are some practical and fun ways we could reuse glass, plastic or metal containers? You may also draw pictures of how your ideas would look. |
10. | Prepare a poster that shows the use of too much packaging and ways to reduce packaging, such as using materials that can be recycled or are biodegradable. |
11. | Write some rules for your school recycling program. These rules should include how to recycle, what to recycle, when and where to recycle. This can also be done as a poster. |
12. | Plan a display to start the recycling program in your school. This display should be colorful, have lots of information and encourage the children and adults to participate. |
13. | During a trip to the grocery store look at the packaging of several products. Describe the variety of ways in which one type of product is packaged by different companies (for example, apple juice, laundry detergent and snack foods). Is one method of packaging better for the environment than another? |
14. | Look around the grocery store to find items that say they are made from recycled materials. Make a drawing or a list of these items to share with people interested in buying such products. Hint: paper goods aisle is a good place to start. |
15. | Make a list of the kinds of things your community recycles. Describe how each of these is recycled in your home. |
16. | Prepare a design that could be pasted to the outside of a recycling bin that shows what should be recycled, that attracts attention to the bin and promotes the use of the bin in your classroom and school. |
17. | Look on the bottom of a plastic container to find a number in the middle of a triangle formed by arrows. Draw this symbol and describe why you think this was chosen as a symbol for recycling. |
18. | Talk with a public official such as your county legislator Bill Ryan (995-2827) about the need for recycling and how your community recycles. |
Resources
www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/saving | Click on Recycling topics at the bottom of the page |
www.epa.gov/kids | Click on Garbage & Recycling in the center or at the bottom |
www.epa.gov | Click on “recycling” in Quick Finder |
www.rirrc.org | Click Kids Corner in lower right for links, games and great illustration of recycling sorting |
www.mcswmd.org | Click on Environmental Trivia or Earth Care on the left |
www.state.me.us/spo/recycle/education | Click students page for recycling facts |
www.paperrecycles.org | Click recycling |
www.conservatree.org | Click on “Learn More” |
Attention Westchester Third Graders!
Help make the earth's future brighter by becoming a Recycling Ranger!
Did You Know? |
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If everyone in the USA recycled their Sunday newspaper, it would save 500,000 trees a year!! | The average American throws away 4½ pounds of trash every day—For a family of 4 that’s 18 pounds!! |
The Recycling Ranger program is a way to engage young people in thinking about their role in protecting the environment. By emphasizing recycling, we hope to encourage children to contribute to the future health of our planet by being good stewards of the environment now, one recyclable at a time.
Here's how the program works...
- Contact a participating legislator to visit your third grade classroom to launch the Recycling Ranger program.
- Following this initial visit to the classroom to discuss what recycling is all about and how it helps the environment, students are asked to put their creativity behind a project or an activity that raises awareness about the importance of recycling.
- After collecting and reviewing the projects, the Legislator will make a return visit to review the students' presentations.
- Participating students will receive certificates signifying they completed the program and sheriff-like Recycling Rangers badges.
Whether students create a poem, a drawing or painting or an original idea to encourage others to remember to recycle, students find this activity not only challenging and fun but get a great lesson on the environment and community.
Guess what can be recycled... |
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Glass Jars? |
Computers? |
Newspaper? |
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Cell phones? |
Soda Cans? |
Ketchup Bottles? |
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All of these & more! |
Westchester County wants you to recycle as much as possible.
Our community collects:
- Newspapers, magazines, junk mail, card board
- Glass jars and bottles
- Plastic (marked 1 or 2 in the recycle triangle)
- Tin and aluminum cans, pie pans
Many other items that could harm people or the environment are collected by Westchester County for safe disposal on special Household Clean Up Days. These items include: Household chemicals like paint thinner and insecticides, car tires, mercury thermometers, fluorescent light bulbs and rechargeable and button cell batteries.
Electronics can be recycled too! |
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Cell phones. It’s against the law to throw away a cell phone. Old cell phones can be fixed for people who may need help in a hurry. Check the County website for Household Chemical Clean-up Day locations and other places you can take a cell phone for recycling. |
Computers. Westchester County matches up businesses that are buying new computers with non-profit groups like schools, programs that do job training and after-school programs.Click here for more. |
Website |
Link |
New York State Government | http://www.ny.gov/ |
White House Kids Page | http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids |
Westchester County Government | http://www.westchestergov.com/ |
Board of Legislators Resources | https://www.westchesterlegislators.com/resources |
To complement their study of government, fifth grade classes can experience the legislative process first-hand through the Board's Student Legislature program. In this two-hour program, held on the legislative floor in the County's Michaelian Office Building, a legislative aide first gives students an overview of how the legislature works. Particular attention is given to how the committee system works in moving and developing ideas and suggestions into laws that affect the lives of the almost one million residents of Westchester County.
The students then go to work as legislators. Sitting in the legislators' seats in the Chambers, they debate and vote on a mock issue that legislative staff has prepared for their discussion. Topics have included issues that have actually gone before the Board such as whether to ban smoking in public places to other issues that can grab a student's attention such as whether school should be year-round!
In the course of the discussion in the Chambers, students learn about legislative procedures. Particular attention is paid to the duties of the Board's Chair and Clerk as well as the Committee Chairs in safeguarding the integrity of the legislative process. These leaders must be very knowledgeable about the rules of procedure set out in the County Board's own rule book (Chapter 960 of the County Charter, the Rules of the County Board of Legislators), as well as the widely-used Robert's Rules of Order. No deviation from the Rules is ever allowed. This strict adherence to the process ensures that each Board meeting moves along in an orderly and efficient way and that laws are passed in the same way, from year-to-year and issue-to-issue. Making sure the process is fair and consistent is a very important part of the democratic process.
Student Legislatures are scheduled for Wednesday through Friday mornings. Anyone interested in scheduling a Student Legislature should contact their District Legislator for participation.
The Board encourages fifth grade teachers and students to take advantage of what many have found to be a unique and exciting hands-on learning experience.
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