Waste Reduction & Recycling Checklists & Tools

Waste Reduction & Recycling is one of the seven Environmental Pathways you can choose towards gaining recognition as a Green Star School. These efforts may also help you qualify for recognition as a state or federal Green Ribbon School. 

Use the checklists, audit tools, action project ideas, and lesson plans to engage your students, teachers, parents, and staff in reducing waste, promoting reuse, recycling and composting, and tracking progress at your school. These files are downloadable MS-Word and Excel files.

Waste Reduction Checklist - This checklist includes action project ideas for students, staff, teachers, and facility and operations managers, as well as links to professional development opportunities, recycling resources for schools, and 14 lesson plans from Facing the Future, county agencies, the Story of Stuff and several others.

Waste Walk-through Assessment (high school and adults)

Waste Audit (elementary)

Waste Audit Tally Sheet (elementary)

Check out our "How to do Hands-on Audits" page for more information on engaging your students of all ages in doing environmental audits of your school campus. This page includes sample permission slips for students to do waste audits, sample lesson plans, trash can quiz activity, and more.

Use some of these simple on-line calculators from our Environmental Footprint Calculators page to estimate the costs and benefits of waste reduction, as well as the carbon, pollution, energy, waste, and water avoided from reuse, recycling, green purchasing, composting, and more.