With the new school year underway, the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) and Scholastic today unveiled an updated version of their Recycling Starts with You! educational program.  Distributed nationwide in print  to 100,000 teachers/classrooms and more than 2.5 million students, this program includes a mini-poster featuring standards-based math, science, and language arts lessons about paper recycling for third- through sixth-grade students.

The new resources are also available online at www.scholastic.com/recycling and at www.paperrecycles.org, along with how-to guides, statistics, and interactive features for educators and students.  Also available online is information on the annual AF&PA Recycling Awards, which recognize outstanding school, office, and business paper recycling programs with monetary prizes and national recognition.

“Improving awareness and education has been vital to our successfully increasing paper recovery by almost 80 percent since 1990.  We are pleased to provide materials that empower students to take action that has tremendous benefits for our schools, communities, and environment,” said AF&PA President and CEO Donna Harman.
 
In 2008, a record-high 57.4 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling.  Efforts to educate the next generation of recyclers will hopefully guarantee the continuation of one of America’s great environmental success stories.