Green Up Our Schools works to ensure that our youngest generations learn the importance of protecting the Earth's resources by reducing, reusing, and recycling. In order to foster change and help children understand the importance of waste diversion, we take an educational approach: strengthening their understanding of how their own actions impact our environment. Our program not only integrates waste reduction lessons at the elementary school level, we put the "green team" students in charge. The skills learned by the green team gives them tools to organize and lead the world towards a cleaner, more sustainable future. By giving them control of choosing waste campaigns, instructing their peers on how to help, and running competitions, Green up Our Schools creates opportunity for students K-8 to learn and grow leadership skills that can lead to long-lasting impacts on current (and future) individual, school, and community waste reduction. These leadership skills apply in many other facets of life, and help students build confidence. Green Up Our Schools staff are available full time for our teachers to offer guidance, resources, and knowledge to ensure our schools are achieving success. Each school conducts a minimum of two school-wide waste audits, at the beginning and end of the school year, as well as implementing the minimum quarterly project specific audits. Green Team members conduct these waste audits with the help of other students, staff, teachers, and volunteers to assure only trash is being sent to the landfill, to plan future project, and to assess the success of current campaigns. Schools in our program will receive a total of $2,000 over the course of 3 years. In total, we've helped schools reduce 16.2 million pounds of waste and have empowered and educated over 115,000 students in 3 states! (CA, CO, & MA) See our website for more information, blog posts on our schools, or to apply today!