ELP Waste Reduction – Tangalooma EcoMarines

Waste Reduction

Reduce Waste in your Centre

This eco-focus is all about reducing waste in your centre using the 5 R’s. A good place to start is re-purposing waste items into other things through our FUNcycling competition. There are also lots of other activities below! Let’s get your centre refusing, reducing, reusing, recycling and rotting!

Early Years Learning Framework

Learning Outcomes:

2.4 – Children become socially responsible and show respect for the environment

4.1 – Children develop dispositions for learning

Principles:

5. Ongoing learning and reflective practice

Practices:

3. Learning through play

CHALLENGE: FUNcycling!

EQUIPMENT:

Various waste items depending on upcycling activities chosen

TIME NEEDED:

30 minutes for educational components – STEP 1 and 2

1 to 2 hours for upcycling activities – STEP 3

Step 1 - What are the 5 R's

Teach children about the 5 R’s of waste reduction: refuse, reduse, reuse, recycle and rot. Here are some helpful videos and resources to share with your children:

Step 2 - 5 R's Hand Signal Activity

To help them remember what each of the 5 R’s mean, get children to come up with a hand signal or action for each word. We have an educational poster to help your teaching and some examples of hand signals or actions below.

Step 3 - FUNcycling!

Create new items from things that would otherwise end up in the bin! There are plenty of ways to upcycle rubbish items and we have collated some ideas in the guide below:

Or, get creative and think of new ways to upcycle rubbish items commonly found in your centre. You might even like to hold a market stall for your community to sell your upcycled goods.

Step 4 - Submission

We want to see your trash-tastic upcycled items! Send us photos of the items your children have created and tell us what trash items were used to create the new product.

The centre with the best entry will win an EcoMarines team visit and presentation along with with a waste and recycling game set and a story book.

CHALLENGE: Containers for Change

Does your centre have a containers for change refund scheme? If not, then this might be a challenge for you!

Step 1

Set up and area in your centre where kids and staff can put their empty bottles and containers.

Step 2

Educate your kids and staff about what can and cannot go in the containers for change bin!

Step 3

Get your Centre using the bin!

Once your bin is full, choose what to do with the funds! These could be put towards an environmental project in the centre, a local charity or anything else you choose. EcoMarines is a registered charity with Containers for Change and we would welcome any donations to help us grow! Our code is C10041492 if you would like to donate.

The Containers for Change website has more information on what type of containers are accepted, and where to return them.

Step 4

Create a poster with your kids about the items allowed in the bin!

Activities about Waste Reduction & Litter

Recycling Stations

Do you have recycling bins in your centre? How many do you have?

Did you know there are 6 streams of recycling? Check out our special recycling page for more info!

You can create a recycling station at your centre with bins for each stream. Most local recycling centres will take these items, so make sure you have a team member or a parent who is willing to take this recycling to the right place.

The most important aspect of creating a recycling station is educating your centre staff and children. A great idea is to allow children to make posters of what can and cannot go in each recycling bin!

Clean-Up Club

This is a great idea if you have a local area that needs a little clean!

If feasible, you can take children on a walk around your local neighborhood or park area. Using buckets, gloves and pick-up sticks, children (with supervision) can pick up any rubbish they find.

It might be a good idea to send out a team member beforehand to scope out the rubbish and get rid of any unsafe items. And, why not invite parents to come and help?

After your clean-up, you can display the rubbish collected and discuss how it got there, the effects of this rubbish on our environment, and what we can do to stop it getting there.

Here are a few things to help out:

Little Free Lunches

Stop waste by helping parents pack waste-free lunch!

If parents pack lunches or snacks for the children in your centre, then it might be a good idea to send them some useful materials on how to pack waste-free lunches and how much money they can save by doing so.

Packing waste-free lunches ensures less rubbish comes into your centre and therefore less chance of this rubbish ending up in our local environments!

Here are some useful resources:

Wear-able Art

You can alter the Waste Warriors Art Competition to a wear-able art activity!

Instead of making a general art piece out of the top 3 litter items at your centre, you can use those items to help children create wear-able art.

Each child can create there own costume from litter items with the help of your team. Then, you can host a fashion show where family and friends can attend. The fashion show can include an education component, you can show a few videos from our EcoMarines YouTube Channel and your children can talk about the harmful effects of litter. Children can then parade their wear-able art to end the event!

Bottle Cap Challenge

Save your bottle caps when recycling containers and have an art competition between classes!

The crew at Avenues Early Learning Norman Park love to repurpose rubbish items. They collected bottle caps from containers and had a competition between classes. Each class created an artwork out of bottle lids such as a beautiful Australian flag.

Your centre can also use bottle lids for art. Send us some photos if you do!

Shredded Paper Challenge

If your centre collects a lot of shredded paper, get your educators to take part in the Shredded Paper Challenge with their class!

Here is what the team at Avenues Norman Park did for the challenge: “We decided to give our educators the challenge to come up with some creative ways that they could use the shredded paper in their programs.

Over the weeks our educators consistently came up with innovative ideas on how we can embed sustainable practices into our projects and everyday happenings.

Some of our exciting creations were paper making, volcano & fruit bowl. Also, lots of exciting and creative sensory exploration set ups & using it in our worm farms and gardens. One of our parents also took paper home for her guinea pigs.” – Candice, educator Avenues- Norman Park