It’s no secret that teaching the values and principles of sustainability are an integral part of every modern-day classroom. Sustainability activities and sustainable practices that get your students thinking about the planet are a great way to raise awareness of the environment and its needs.
Show your students just how easy a sustainable lifestyle can be with our tips for the classroom.
Once you’ve educated your class on sustainable practices, it’s a great idea to set some goals for your school environment! Having an energy-efficient and waste-wise classroom will go a long way to really embed sustainable thinking in your students’ minds.
Why not download and display our Ways To Reduce Your Carbon Footprint Poster in your classroom, or even customise our Sustainability Footprints Word Wall to keep your students and yourself accountable!
45 Easy Sustainable Practices for the Classroom
Our beautifully designed Sustainability Quote Poster Resource Pack is the perfect resource to get you and your students in a sustainable mindset.
Display them around your classroom or school, and follow these easy to implement steps to do your part for the planet!
Save Energy
While technology certainly has made our lives easier, if not used responsibly it will leave a big carbon footprint on the Earth. Teach your students about energy emissions and then follow up with our Classroom Energy Audit.
In this innovative new resource, students will:
- observe the lighting, heating and cooling, and appliances in your room
- investigate your room’s electrical usage
- suggest actions to reduce your energy consumption.
Did you remember to switch off the lights? Be a bright spark and switch off the lights in your classroom to really conserve energy.
Manage Your Waste
Waste management is a fantastic way to reduce your classroom’s greenhouse emissions. We have designed some informative Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rethink and Repair Posters to help you to start a class discussion on how you can limit the day to day waste produced in your classroom.
Boost interest by asking your students to complete a Rubbish Bin Sorting Activity and Waste Management Investigation: How Much Do We Throw Away? Create a waste station in your room, accompanied by these friendly critters on our Rubbish, Recycle, and Compost posters!
Your students will love our hands on maths investigation Mass Maths Investigation – How Much Do We Throw Away?
This activity is a particularly good way for middle years students to combine your sustainable efforts in a cross-curricular context.
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You may already have a PlanetArk box for recycling your printing cartridges or paper. For the rest of your deceased stationery, TerraCycle provides a handy disposal system that allows you to recycle almost any type of waste. Seems silly not to, doesn’t it?
For more information about how to make recycling easy in your classroom, read our blog 10 Nifty Ways to Encourage Recycling in the Classroom.
Re-Purpose Paper
It is near impossible to have a zero waste classroom when things like worksheets and printouts are such an integral part of a teacher’s day to day life. You can get pretty close, however, by being smart about the amount of paper you use.
Here are some ideas about how to reduce your paper use:
- Make your students’ workbooks last longer by organising loose worksheets into folders.
- Make printable worksheets into booklets at the start of the term.
- Create a scrap paper drawer.
- Shred your paper for craft activities, such as paper maché or donate it to your local animal shelter for animal bedding.
- Use Recycled Paper Bead Kits. Once you have enough, use the beads as counters, or create some beautiful visual art pieces! Or even use them in our Pattern Maths Investigation – Bands of Friendship.
Here at Teach Starter, we are committed to reducing our paper waste and helping the environment in whatever way we can. We’re going to plant one million trees! Teach Starter have pledged to plant one million trees by 2033 with our One Million Trees Project by planting a tree for every person who subscribes to Teach Starter. If you haven’t already, head on over to our subscription plans page and help us out on this environmental initiative.
Be Fussy with Food and Water
A waste station set-up in the classroom wouldn’t be complete without a compost bin.
Use the natural scraps from your students’ lunches to create compost to nourish your school’s gardens, or find out if there’s a community garden nearby that would take it off your hands! Brisbane City Council has set up a fabulous Community Compost initiative. They’ll even give you a kitchen (or classroom!) caddy.
Put up our informative Compost Bin Needs Poster to make sure you’re doing things right and make sure you teach your class the importance of hygiene and washing their hands.
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If your school is lucky enough to have an agriculture department or chook shed they would be the perfect place to take your unwanted food scraps. They may pay you back with some lovely eggs!
Just remember to be careful and check what exactly you’re allowed to give chickens before you set this system up.
And where would we be without water?
Explore the importance of water with our Water Is Life Resource Pack, before implementing some changes straight away in your classroom.
You’ll have your students turning off the taps, reporting leaks and flushing with a half flush in no time! Don’t forget to empty your drink bottles into the garden at the end of the day to make the most of every drop!
Get Crafty
It’s no secret that teachers are top of the class when it comes to re-purposing used items in the name of art and craft. When you put your mind to it, it’s easy to find dozens of ways to make sure your art supplies are as environmentally friendly as possible.
Waste is something we do, not something that is.
Here are a just a few easy to follow sustainable practices for the art cupboard:
- Up-cycle rubbish to create models, artworks, displays or even educational tools. Use our 12 Hour Clock Template, some split pins and some paper plates to easily create this paper plate clock with your class.
- Swap plastic cups and straws for paper ones. Do an exSTRAWdinary thing for the environment, and switch to biodegradable or paper straws for your craft activities.
- Use environmentally friendly craft supplies. Keep nasty chemicals out of our environment.
- Better yet, make your own paint from old items! This recipe for turning old, tired felt pens into homemade watercolour paint is a great way to get the most out of your stationery before you chuck it in the TerraCycle box. You can wash and use old yoghurt containers and egg cartons for paint pots to make painting even more environmentally friendly.
- See if your community has access to a recycling centre that offers educational experiences. Reverse Garbage is a Brisbane based company that offer amazing sustainability education workshops, incursions and excursions to teach your students all about the benefits of creating craft from waste.
Sustainable Classroom Supplies
You’ve probably invested a lot of time and money at the start of every year purchasing new pencil pots, backing paper, whiteboard markers and other miscellaneous classroom items. Save yourself and the environment, and think smarter about your classroom supplies.
Use Fabric to Back Your Displays
This is a terrific way to keep your classroom visually fresh without wasting poster paper. You can usually find an amazing array of patterned materials at a textiles shop, or if you’re after a more simple canvas grab a large flat sheet for cheap from your local second-hand store.
Refillable Whiteboard Markers That Work!
When I was teaching, I was always looking for a whiteboard marker that worked. It seemed that there were markers, markers everywhere, but not a drop of ink! I hated the thought of throwing away so much plastic each term. Then I discovered these refillable whiteboard markers from AusPen and my life was changed forever. They even use recycled plastic for the pens and double sided nibs for when they’re getting a bit sad and tired.
Did you know that in Australia alone, there are around 40,000,000 white board markers thrown out by schools, universities and other learning institutions each year?
Why not be even more thrifty with refillable pens and highlighters?
Personal Touch Pencil Pots
Pencil pots are another necessity that can do their part for the environment.
Sterilise and repurpose milk cartons or tin cans for pencil pots. Get your students to decorate them for a fun beginning-of-year activity as a way for them to put their own personal touch on the classroom. Make a note to check the cans for sharp edges before handing them over to their designers!
Every Little Bit Counts
Even the smallest of items can be put to good use.
Bottle tops can be made into personalised game pieces, use magazine images for classroom displays, and cut paper towel holders in half for tubes to hold charging cables.
Reach Out To Your Community
If your school community is anything like mine was, there will always be an abundance of parents putting their hands up to help out. Why not ask them to scavenge around at home and donate anything that could be useful in your classroom?
Pre-loved books are a great way to flesh out your school library, and disused costumes and clothes (washed of course!) are wonderful for any early years classroom’s dress up corner.
Here are some other second-hand items that you would find make invaluable contributions to your room:
- furniture
- old technology, such as telephones, typewriters and record players
- used board games and puzzles
- cooking utensils
- toys
- cushions (again, washed!)
- art and craft paper and cardboard for modelling and craft work
- take away containers, old paper ream boxes, and pringles jars to store equipment.
Trash cans truly become treasure! Old items from home make a great source of evidence for a Past and Present unit of inquiry.
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Be careful that you are very specific about your requirements when requesting these items from parents. You don’t want to become the local second-hand drop off store! Try to make sure you have a purpose for everything that gets brought in – parents love to see when something they’ve contributed has been put to good use. And don’t forget to ask them for suggestions – they may have something that you’ve not even considered yet!
Lunch Time Audit
Though it may not technically be in the ‘classroom’, a student’s lunch box is another area where a few small changes can make a big difference.
You’ve heard of lunch box audits that uncover the nutritional value of your lunch box, but what about the environmentally friendly value?
A lunch box audit can help your students take action from the classroom to their homes, and open up a discussion about sustainability with their parents that can further cement their learning. Check out our Student Lunch Box Audit Worksheet.
Use the information from a lunchtime audit to work out how much waste your students’ lunches produce in a week, a term and even a year!
Some tips for a sustainable lunch box to take from this activity include:
- Use re-usable packaging, such as beeswax lunch wraps, reusable pouches and fabric lunch pouches.
- Eat more fruit and vegetables, and food that doesn’t require packaging.
- Fill small containers repeatedly with crackers and other snacks from larger packets.
- Use a re-usable lunch box with compartments to prevent cross-food contamination.
- Re-use glad wrap and foil when possible.
- Have a Nude Food Day where the objective is for your class to have a completely waste free lunch box for a day.
- Use re-usable cutlery sets.
Why not extend your lunchtime waste saving to the canteen or tuckshop?
Encourage the use of recyclable or compostable packaging for food containers and bamboo utensils. Help your canteen research the possibility of sourcing it’s food from local suppliers to reduce the food miles of their products, and don’t forget that compost bin!
Beyond the Classroom…
At Teach Starter HQ, we are incredibly passionate about sustainability and have made some simple changes to ensure that our office is energy efficient and has reduced as much waste as possible. Having communal keep cups available for the lunchtime coffee run, handy detailed posters to remind people to dispose of waste thoughtfully, timed lights and air conditioning, and office waste recycling stations are just a few of the things that your office can implement to encourage a more sustainable school environment.
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