INDIANA, USA — "Every day is Earth Day," says IDEM (Indiana Department of Environmental Management) educator Jessica Irvine, but during the month of April, the government agency goes all out, visiting hundreds of schools across Indiana to teach students of all ages about how to be good stewards of the environment, including how to recycle, compost and contribute to cleaner air and water.
Tap HERE to learn more about their school presentations and how to sign up your class or school for a visit.
(Note: They are no longer signing up schools officially for their April 2024 sessions. However, they will try to set up another visit with your class! Contact Jessica Irvine at education@idem.IN.gov.)
We tagged along for one of these school visits to see what they are teaching our kids across state. Teachers can request various topics. We arrived at Geist Montessori Academy in McCordsville for a kindergarten class to learn specifically about recycling and how to reduce our trash output. They said, on average, we produce 4-5 pounds of trash every day. They were coming up with easy ways to reduce that footprint, so less trash needs to be taken to our landfills across Indiana.
These sessions are interactive and hands-on. They are meant to be fun and memorable for local students. At first, IDEM spoke about what they do on a daily basis and taught how landfills are constructed. They also showed how some landfills have been converted into public spaces.
What can be recycled?
After an introduction, IDEM brought out typical trash that we have in an American household. The job for the students was to pick an item and figure out if it can be reused, recycled, trashed or composted. We all learned how to properly prepare recyclable materials and what can be composted.
They also answered special questions about Styrofoam and plastic grocery store bags:
- Styrofoam: It cannot be recycled with curb pickup in Indiana because until recently, there wasn't a facility in Indiana that had a Styrofoam recycling machine. They are complex and expensive. However, there is now a place where you can take your Styrofoam! It's RecycleForce's drop-off located at 816 N. Sherman Drive.
- Grocery store bags get caught in the recycling machines. However, many grocery stores have bag drop-offs in the front of their stores where you can bring your bags. They have special machines to handle the thin, plastic film.
Composting with worms
The kids loved the worms! IDEM brought a tub that they use as a compositing example. The worms slowly degraded the food wasted into nutrient rich soil. Then, they take the soil and add it to gardens and potted plants.
If you want to compost at home, they suggested you add leaves, twigs and greens into the compost bin, as well as food waste.
These are all small ways we can help make Indiana cleaner!