Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Trash Detectives!

Look inside your kitchen trash can. An apple core, a juice box, a cardboard box, a plastic bag. Some of that trash can turn into brand new things! An old glass bottle can be melted down and become a brand new bottle. But a banana peel can't be melted — it needs to rot in the dirt instead. Today you become a Trash Detective and sort clues into the right bin.

- The three special words: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - How to tell if something belongs in the recycling bin, the compost, or the trash - Why using less trash in the first place is the best trick of all

Reduce comes first because it's the easiest way to help. If you bring a real water bottle to school instead of buying a new plastic one every day, you reduced how much plastic got thrown away at all. Turning off a light when you leave a room reduces how much energy a power plant has to make. Reducing means the trash never gets made in the first place.

An empty yogurt cup can become a paint cup for art class. An old t-shirt can become a rag for cleaning. A cardboard box can become a fort or a robot costume. Reusing means you find a new job for something instead of throwing it away.

Recycling is different from reusing. Recycling breaks material down and rebuilds it into a new object. A glass jar gets crushed, melted at a very hot 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, and poured into a mold to make a new jar. A plastic milk jug can be shredded into tiny flakes and spun into fibers for a fleece jacket. Paper gets mashed into pulp and pressed flat again into new paper.