Launch a recycle campaign!

You may need permission in school to carry out some of these. Make sure you ask a teacher, such as your form tutor for support first. You don't want to upset anyone as they may decide they don't like your ideas without properly listening to them.

If there’s a group of you interested then you could set up a lunchtime club (if there's only one of you at the minute you can ask your friends for help or ask a teacher if they know any other interested people at your school).

As a group you could decide what you needs doing around your school and make sure that it gets done! Here are some examples of projects and improvements:

• Get a separate box/bin in every classroom for recycling paper and make sure they get emptied regularly. Get support from senior staff as this could be announced in assembly and have a regular time when you collect them (e.g. one lunchtime a week). Most reprographics (photocopying) departments in the school will get their paper delivered in boxes that you could re-use. Alternatively ask different departments to save the boxes that they get exercise books and other stationary delivered in. This is a great opportunity to re-use resources that would otherwise end up in the bin.

  Is their any other use that you can think of for these boxes? If so let us know! teens AT younggreens.org.uk

• If you've never heard of Recycool then your school could to get involved and you could be the person to launch it!! You could raise hundreds of pounds for your school to spend and you will be recycling printer ink cartridges and mobile phones to help the environment. Check out this great website:

  www.recycool.org

  which has all the information you could ever need – advertising posters, examples of letters to teachers and parents, games....

• You could also try looking at the following website:

  www.alupro.org.uk

  to find out if your school could benefit from collecting and then selling aluminium cans (e.g. Most fizzy drinks cans). This is a great website which gives the details of companies willing to buy aluminium cans. This could make a great school-wide fund-raising event. Proceeds could go towards loads of different things but one example is using the money to buy the equipment, plants and expertise to set up a nature garden or allotment at your school.

• Some schools have undertaken very ambitious projects such as building their own wind turbines and creating and maintaining their own nature gardens. For a more realistic starting point you could put pressure on your school to take part in “Eco Schools”. They have a very detailed website at www.eco-schools.org.uk. If this is something that you think could benefit your school then here is a letter that you could print off and give to your head teacher. Read through it first and change the bits in italics to personalise it. Also, the more names you have on the bottom of it the better as it looks like more people are willing to get involved.

• Encouraging staff to re-use materials such as envelopes, elastic bands and packaging. You could help the office staff set up systems to collect and re-use these.

• Planting trees on the school site. You may need to think of a fund raising idea so that you can afford to buy the trees.

• Arranging for more litter bins and in the best spots. If your school grounds are sinking under litter then speak to the caretakers about where the bins are and how effective they are. It might be that they are not emptied regularly enough and are full and so people think they have no choice but to throw it on the ground. Moving a few bins could make a lot of difference.

• Asking for composting bins to re-use the waste from the kitchens effectively.

• Insisting that resources that are bought are made from recycled products wherever possible (e.g. exercise books, toilet paper etc). Head's of departments are usually responsible for ordering exercise books for their department so speak to them about where they order them from and if they could switch to recycled products.

• Use the internet to get loads of fantastic ideas! Go to the Young Greens links for some ideas on where to start.

• Tell us what you've been doing in your school so that other people can learn from your great ideas! We are keen to get young people's stories online so send in yours to teens AT younggreens.org.uk

  Note: Young Greens are not responsible for the content of external sites and do not necessarily support or agree with any of the content.