Resources for staff members who want to teach their students about the benefits of recycling. No matter what grade level you teach, it is important to teach your students how to recycle in the classroom and at home. See a step-by-step of how things got started initially:
Resources
For Other Schools
The CF Schools C.A.R.E. Recycling Program originally began as a program called Holmes Helps. Holmes Helps ensured that all plastic waste was recycled and all food waste was composted at Holmes Junior High (one of the middle schools in the Cedar Falls School District). After a year of great success in saving about 100 pounds of plastic and about 3000 lbs. of food waste from entering the landfill, the Holmes Helps program is expanding to a district-wide program and is now called CF Schools C.A.R.E. to include all schools in the Cedar Falls School district.
How It Started
History of Holmes Helps
After learning about the pressing threats of climate change and pollution in the world during her eighth grade Earth Science class, Cedar Falls student Maya Mallavarapu became inspired to create change and contribute to society with efforts to fight against environmental pollution. When pondering these inspiring ideas, Maya wondered if there was anything she could do to reduce the amount of plastic waste entering the landfills and polluting the Earth and potentially damaging human health, and where better to start than school and her neighborhood?
As a result, Maya wondered if it was possible to recycle all the plastic waste and compost all the food waste at Holmes Junior High School. She took this idea to the associate principal of Holmes Junior High, Mr. Rosburg. Together, with the help of Green Iowa AmeriCorps members, they formulated a plan and worked out the logistics of this initiative, forming the CF Schools C.A.R.E. Recycling Program.
