This section of The Recycling Challenge has four parts. Your teacher may require you to complete all, or fewer parts depending on the time available in your class. Before you begin any part of this process make sure you read and understand the criteria that will be used to evaluate your work.

Part 1 - Identify the waste stream in your school.

1. Consider a typical school day. Create a drawing (or drawings) that show your school's current system for dealing with waste. Your drawing should help answer the following questions:

• What kind of waste would be found in the garbage at the end of a school day?
• Where does the garbage go once it leaves your classroom?
• What materials in the garbage do you think are recyclable?
• Where would be the best place to modify or redirect the waste stream with a recycling plan?

2. Share your drawings with your class.

Part 2 - Create a recycling plan that will modify the waste stream to help your school recycle.

1. Use the information included in your drawing to help design a recycling plan for your school. In order to establish an effective recycling program it is helpful to define the following:

• Goals - what do you hope to accomplish with a recycling plan? These should be listed and agreed upon by the people that are responsible for overseeing and participating in the recycling plan. These people are called stakeholders.
• Steps to Take - This should include a list of steps to accomplish your plan, who is responsible for each step, and a timeline or date for accomplishing each step.

  As part of The Recycle Challenge, it is important that you think about how you will measure how effective your plan is in reducing the amount of garbage going to the landfill. You will also need to think about how you will present your results at the end of the year to convince others of the importance of continuing the recycling efforts begun with your plan.

2. Use the Recycling Plan Worksheet to create a draft of a plan for discussion.
3. Discuss the draft plan. This discussion will help refine the plan to create a final version that can be used to begin a recycling program at your school.
4. Create a Final Plan to use for your recycling efforts. Be sure to share your plan with all stakeholders at your school.

Part 3 - Predict how your plan will impact the waste stream.

1. To help evaluate your plan once it is implemented you will be collecting data and graphing it. Before you begin, it can be useful to predict what you think some of the graphs might look like. These graphs won't have real numbers attached to them, but will show, in general, what you think will happen to certain parts of the waste stream at your school over the course of The Recycle Challenge. You can compare these predictions to real graphs created over the course of the school year to see how you are doing. Select a link below to download a blank graph and directions on how to complete it.

• Impact of waste going to landfill with and without recycling. (waste1.pdf)
• Impact of recycling on amount of garbage in a classroom for a four week period. (waste2.pdf)
• Amount of recycled material per week for a three month period. (waste3.pdf)

2. Create your graphs and discuss them as a class.
3. Save the graphs to compare with graphs created from data collected as you implement your plan.

Part 4 - Implement the plan and collect data.

1. Begin recycling at your school using the plan you created.
2. Be sure to modify your plan if necessary.