1. Save paper by using dry-erase paper covers that make exercises reusable.
2. Instead of using plastic Easter grass, use leftover salad greens or shredded paper instead.
3. Avoid plastic by replacing your highlighters with highlighter pencils instead.
4. Seed starter pots make a great afternoon gardening project, especially if you can reuse items like toilet paper rolls and Play-doh canisters.
5. This DIY felted soap lasted this teacher (who normally goes through many, many bars of soap) for four (!!!) months.
6. Always have a recycling bin in the classroom.
7. Recycle cereal boxes, Amazon boxes, and other kinds of packaging for games and lessons.
I mean, how cute and fun are these puzzles made from food packaging??
8. Save your soap dispensers and use them as an easy way to distribute paints.
9. Glue-soaked sponges will save you so many glue sticks.
10. This teacher bought reusable chalkboard place cards off eBay to avoid having to laminate name tags time and time again.
11. Get on Terracycle's list for chip bag and squeeze pack recycling — they send you free shipping labels and you mail them the box.
12. Make watercolor paints by soaking your unusable markers.
13. You should save your dead markers and ship them off to Crayola, who actually recycles them, using a free shipping label.
14. Furoshiki, a style of Japanese gift wrapping, is a great skill to teach using discarded clothes/cloth.
15. And speaking of Mother's Day, this teacher created a project making zero-waste lavender sachet gifts using burlap, yarn, and bulk bin lavender.
16. Try a stapleless stapler.
17. Use refillable whiteboard markers.
