Napa County Schools Recycle

Napa County and partners City of Napa and Napa County Resource Conservation District (RCD) have released a new Countywide Waste Reduction and Recycling Curriculum that’s FREE to local teachers. The curriculum consists of seven standards-based in-class lessons designed to increase student understanding of concepts such as the 4Rs, conservation, waste prevention, renewable vs. non-renewable resources, product life cycles, and biodegradation. The lessons are designed to stand individually or form a cohesive curriculum if used together, and include all necessary teacher background.

City and County staff are available to suggest additional resources on the subjects covered, collect teacher feedback, and answer questions about the website and the curriculum. Please contact us.

A special thank you to StopWaste for allowing us to adapt lessons from Doing the 4Rs.

About the Downloads

All downloads contain the student worksheets. The “Student Worksheets Only” link is just to make it easier to send those documents to your students.
Prefer to download everything at once? All seven lessons are here.
Please let us know if you find any errors. Downloads will be updated as corrections are made.

Lesson 1: Kids Doing the 4Rs

Students will learn about renewable, nonrenewable, and perpetual natural resources, and work in pairs to classify various items as renewable or nonrenewable. They will also be introduced to the concepts of conservation and waste management, including the 4Rs hierarchy, and will record and analyze their own waste prevention and conservation choices.

Lesson and All Worksheets
Student Worksheets Only (for digital classrooms)

Lesson 2: Pack It Up

Students will learn how to reduce packaging waste by comparing products that have minimal or excessive packaging. Students will bring in pictures showing examples of packaging, and work in groups to design and engineer a prototype for a new type of product packaging.

Lesson and All Worksheets
Student Worksheets Only (for digital classrooms)

Lesson 3: Reduce – Where Do You Stand?

Students will practice critical thinking skills while examining their own values related to reducing waste and the consumption of resources. Students will have the opportunity to express their own values and opinions about different waste reduction statements. Then they’ll share their opinions about the waste reduction statements with other students in small groups, and explore how their values may differ from others.

Lesson and All Worksheets
Student Worksheets Only (for digital classrooms)

Lesson 4: From Oil to Plastic

Students will learn about the life cycle of a plastic product and the nonrenewable resource used to make it, by watching a video showing how plastic is produced from raw material to final product. They will create posters showing the chronological steps to making a plastic product, and discuss how recycling extends a product life cycle. Finally, students will analyze fourth and fifth grade appropriate informational text and write an explanation of the life cycle of a plastic product.

Lesson and All Worksheets
Student Worksheets Only (for digital classrooms)

Lesson 5: The Breakdown on Decomposition

Students will collect and classify examples of biodegradable and non-biodegradable items, and watch a video that introduces the process of decomposition in a compost bin or pile. Next, students will read and synthesize fourth and fifth grade-appropriate informational text about composting. Finally, students will choose an important detail from the text around which to design a composting service project or activity.

Lesson and All Worksheets
Student Worksheets Only (for digital classrooms)

Lesson 6: Wonderful Worms!

Students will learn about the role of worms as decomposers by observing live red worms in groups and answering questions about worms based on their observations. Students will read grade appropriate informational text about creating a worm compost bin, in order to write a narrative of a red worm’s life as a decomposer in a worm compost bin.

Lesson and All Worksheets
Student Worksheets Only (for digital classrooms)

Lesson 7: From Tree to Paper

Students will learn about how trees are harvested to make paper. They will participate in an experiment and make a piece of recycled paper from newspaper. Students will evaluate efforts to conserve paper at each level of the 4Rs hierarchy.

Lesson and All Worksheets
Student Worksheets Only (for digital classrooms)