Learning to be Green

The start of the school year brings all sorts of challenges. There are new schedules to adjust, teachers with whom to become acquainted, and a slew of permission slips and other forms to get signed and returned to the right hands!
That doesn’t mean it all has to be stressful, though. A new year can bring a fresh perspective. Our suggestion? Take that feeling of renewal and start with your own personal environment, whether that is the classroom or parts of your home. Once you get started, it’s easy to learn how to make your everyday a little greener.
Create a recycling center.
We use a lot of reusable materials throughout the school year, so it can be truly helpful to set up a designated area just for taking care of all the loose odds and ends to be recycled. You can do this either at home or in the classroom with a simple container for each recyclable material and a basic label for each. At school, each student could be assigned his or her own week to monitor the station for cleanliness and emptying the bins when the time is right.
Make the world a more beautiful place, one crayon at a time.
It probably isn’t something you’d think about right off the bat, but you can reduce an education’s impact on the environment just by buying the right supplies! Several major brands supply eco-friendly offerings such as acid-free glue sticks, petroleum-free crayons, refillable dry erase markers, and more. Take the extra second to do a little research and see if your favorite brands can help you on your mission for a more sustainable school year.
Use what you have. 
Tempting though it may be, you probably don’t need all new items like lunch boxes and book covers. If you reuse the things you already have, there’s no need to toss the old in favor of the new. Likewise, you can always employ everyday items into what you need. Has your lunch box toted its last sandwich? Look into Tupperware alternatives that are already taking up space in your cabinets. Are you worried about the wear and tear a secondhand textbook might sustain? Save the paper bags from your grocery trips and decorate them to your heart’s content. It’s easy to shape them to the covers of most textbooks, but if you need some help you can find the basic idea here.
Hopefully these ideas will get you started on the way to a greener, more sustainable lifestyle for the school year, but if you still have concerns about recycling and eco-friendly living in general, Carolina Fibre is here to help. Check out our blog for more tips, or contact us today!