Classroom Presentations

Education about the impacts of waste allow youth to have a better understanding of their environment and be empowered to take actions to divert trash from the landfill at school and at home for a more sustainable future.

The Environmental Services Department has partnered with I Love A Clean San Diego and Solana Center for Environmental Innovation to offer free zero waste educational programming focused on waste reduction, recycling, and composting to elementary, middle and high schools within the City of San Diego. 

Please email sdrecyclingworks@sandiego.gov to request a classroom presentation and provide your school’s name and address, grade level(s), number of students, topic of interest, presentation format (in-person or virtual), and preferred presentation schedule. Requests will be reviewed and accommodated based on availability.

Miramar Facility Classroom Tours

The Environmental Services Department has partnered with I Love A Clean San Diego to give school bus tours of the Mirarmar Facility for elementary, middle, and high schools within the City of San Diego. This includes a field trip to the Miramar Landfill, Greenery Composting, Hazamat Center, and Buy Back Recycling Center. The tour gives students an overview of what happens to items that are thrown away or recycled and teaches students what they can do to personally contribute less waste to the landfill. Tours are temporarily cancelled at this time. Please email sdrecyclingworks@sandiego.gov to request to be placed on a waitlist once field trip tours resume.

Educational Resources

Recycling in schools, whether it’s paper, cardboard, bottles, cans or food scraps, starts in the classroom and cafeteria. These are great places to engage students in learning more about how to reduce waste through proper sorting of materials and  how circular systems help create healthy food. Here are some fun activities for young environmental stewards!

Worm Composting Printable Activity Sheets

•  What Goes Where - Learn what goes into the compost, recycling or landfill bins by carefully cutting along the dotted outline of each of the cutouts.
• Wormy Ways Maze - Help the worm friend make their way to their compost bin home with this maze!
•  Wormy Words - Learn about the process of composting and the various techniques and types with these three levels word searches.

Worm Composting Instructional Videos

• How to Build Your Own Worm Bin
• Assembling the Contents of Your Worm Bin
• Worm Composting: Care & Feeding

 Recycling Printable Activity Sheets

• Our Climate, Our Future Coloring Activity Book
• Bonita Blue Bin Coloring Activity
• Can Man Connect the Dots
• Match Recycling Words and Definitions
• Crack the Code
• Raw Materials Lineup

Tips for Setting up a School Recycling Program