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A book by Laura C. Martin that supplies ideas to reuse and re-purpose items you can easily find around the house. 40 projects to keep items out of your trash and minimizing waste we create.

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Another book by Lauren Child. her class learn about recycling. The books does a great job at explaining recycling and the benefits. The great surprise is to find the book contains a tree chart, so class if you're a teacher can also do what Charlie and Lola do in the book. Lola learns she can recycle her toys and discovers a recycling competition. She enlists the help of her classmates. Love it

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A fun book by Janet Wong that features the neighborhood dumpster diver Steve (an adult). He enlists the help of of his 3 assistants (kids) to help in turning the the trash into clever creations.

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A book by Linda Trice about a girl who had to write a report about how she spent her Spring vacation.  Kenya visits a museum's recycling exhibit that inspires her to use her own broken things and toys to make art. With a report due on how she spent her vacation, she is ready to teach her class how to Recycle! Reuse! Make Art!

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A Caldecott Award winning book by Timms Taback.  A great book to reinforce re-purposing clothing.  Joseph has an overcoat that gets holes it it.  He makes it into a coat, then eventually into a vest.

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How the oceans can clean themselves: Boyan Slat at TED

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How the oceans can clean themselves: Boyan Slat at TED

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This is a video of Boyan Slad addressing his solution to cleaning the garbage from our oceans. He came up with the idea at age 19. He is now 21 and is using his ingenuity to hopefully clean the worlds oceans of plastic debris.

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How the oceans can clean themselves: Boyan Slat at TEDxDelft

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How the oceans can clean themselves: Boyan Slat at TEDxDelft 18-year-old Boyan Slat combines environmentalism, entrepreneurism and technology to tackle global issues of sustainability. After diving in Greece, and coming across more plastic bags than fish, he wondered; "why can't we clean this up?"

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Authored by Jen Green and Mike Gordon. A book about a teacher, Mr. Jones, that teaches his students all about recycling by taking them to a recycling plant. The book has a section in the back on how to use this book most effectively.

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Projects and activities to help teachers implement green ideas in their classroom, school, and community.

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10 Ways to Go Green at School | Scholastic

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Projects and ideas to help your school go green, from recycling clubs to solar cookouts and more!

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This is an actual photo of the Recycled Orchestra. Now, the Recycled Orchestra plays venues around the world, spreading their message of hope and innovation.

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Children's Book written by Susan Hood.  A true story about Ada Rios.  A girl that grows up in a town in Paraguay built on a landfill.  Mr. Chavez, the new music teacher arrives and makes the poor children instruments out of material found in the trash. Mr. Chavez changes Ada and the town forever.

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Children's Book by Miranda Paul. Great read-aloud book that combines the Gambian culture and language of the main character Isatou. She is one person seeing an insurmountable problem and takes small steps that leads to a giant change.

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Less Than 1% of Sweden's Trash Ends Up In Landfills

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Less Than 1% of Sweden's Trash Ends Up In Landfills

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A story written on ILFScience.com. The Sweedish people produce just as much trash as other Europeans, but they recycle and turn most of the trash into energy. With 32 Waste-to-energy plants, heat and electricity is supplied to thousands. Sweden has honed its incinerator process to limit the amount of toxins released from the burning.

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Humans produce an astonishing amount of trash and we all know it's not good for the environment. We can shove it away in landfills, but there are numerous environmental problems associated with these ugly rubbish dumps. Greenhouse gases such as methane seep out of them and toxic chemicals, for example from household cleaning products, can pollute both the soil and groundwater. They're also smelly, noisy, can damage wildlife and are breeding grounds for disease-transmitting vermin.

While recycling has helped cut down on the amount of waste that ends up in landfills, a considerable amount still gets dumped in them all over the world each year. But one country is showing us that it doesn't have to be that way-Sweden.

Swedish people produce about the same amount of waste per year as other Europeans but, remarkably, less than 1% of household trash ends up in landfills. This is in part due to the 32 waste-to-energy (WTE) plants that have been set up across the country. These plants incinerate over two million tons of trash annually-almost 50% of the waste produced by the country-and have been in operation for years, according to the Huffington Post.

Of course, Sweden still recycles whatever it can, but anything that can't be reused or recycled normally ends up at these WTE plants. As the name suggests, the garbage doesn't go to waste but is used to generate energy. WTE plants contain huge incinerators for the trash. As it's burnt, steam is produced that spins generator turbines which produce electricity. This is then transferred to transmission lines and distributed across the country by a grid.

Amazingly, WTE plants provide close to a million homes with heating and over a quarter of a million homes with electricity. So not only is it reducing the amount of trash that ends up in landfills, but it also helps to reduce Sweden's reliance on fossil fuels.

"A good number to remember is that three tons of waste contains as much energy as one ton of fuel oil... so there is a lot of energy in waste," Göran Skoglund, spokesperson for Öresundskraft, one of the country's leading energy companies, explains in the short video below. That means that the two million tons of waste incinerated each year produces around 670,000 tons worth of fuel oil energy. Sweden even helps to clean up other countries in the EU by importing their trash and burning it.

But what about the environmental impacts of burning rubbish? The process generates byproducts such as ash that contain dioxins, a class of chemical contaminant. However, over the years Sweden has significantly improved the process and byproducts are cleaned up, meaning that only a tiny amount of dioxins are dispersed into the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, because many products contain materials that cannot currently be recycled or incinerated, landfills are still necessary. Reducing the amount of waste we produce altogether would obviously be the best solution, but that is easier said than done. Still, it seems Sweden is making good of a bad situation, and maybe eventually other countries will start to follow suit.

Check out this video to find out more:

Importing garbage for energy is good business for Sweden from Sweden on Vimeo.

Read this: New Measles Cases Reach A 20-Year High Thanks To Anti-Vaxxers

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Less Than 1% Of Sweden's Trash Ends Up In Landfills

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Humans produce an astonishing amount of trash and we all know it's not good for the environment. We can shove it away in landfills, but there are numerous environmental problems associated with these ugly rubbish dumps. Greenhouse gases such as methane seep out of them and toxic chemicals, for example from household cleaning products, can pollute both the soil and groundwater.

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A slide show of the top 20 e-waste producing countries in the world

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The 20 Countries that Generated the Most E-Waste Last Year

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The 20 countries that generated the most e-waste in 2014, ranked by total volume.

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An article from the Dawn Newspaper in Pakistan. A deal has been made to help with garbage crisis in Pakistan. Wazung will collect garbage for free door to door in certain areas and install cans around the city. What is not said is where the garbage will be going.

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The Sindh government and a Chinese firm have inked an agreement for garbage collection in Karachi, where the solid waste problem has assumed crisis proportions.

The agreement in this respect was signed between the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board and Chinese company Wuzung, Radio Pakistan reported.

Under the first phase of the agreement, Wuzung will collect waste in South and East districts of the metropolis. In both districts, the Chinese company will lift garbage from house to house free of cost.

Garbage containers and trash cans will also be installed at various spots in the districts.

See: These Karachiites have a message for Sindh chief minister

The waste management board plans to sign an agreement with the Chinese firm for garbage disposal in other districts of Karachi as well.

The Sindh government has been struggling to contain Karachi's garbage emergency for years. In neighbourhoods across the city mounds of garbage can be observed piling up everywhere.

There is no reliable data about the amount of solid waste the metropolis generates on a daily basis, though estimates suggest it runs into thousands of tonnes.

Much of the waste ends up in dumps, alleyways and open spaces where it remains for weeks if not longer, while some of it is burnt in bonfires that unleash a vile miasma that chokes the entire locality.

In an interview on Geo News show Capital Talk (to be aired on Monday), ex-president Asif Ali Zardari had said that a Chinese company will start operations in Karachi soon to clear the city of garbage.

While responding to a question regarding Karachi's garbage problem, Zardari, whose party rules Sindh, said residents of the Karachi would hear "good news soon".

Former Sindh chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah had in July asked the local government ministry to outsource the job of garbage lifting to some international firm in at least three district municipal corporations.

The waste management board then issued a Letter of Intent (LoI) for two DMCs, South and East, to a Chinese firm for the purpose of garbage collection.

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Chinese company to lift garbage in Karachi

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The Sindh government and a Chinese firm have inked an agreement for garbage collection in Karachi, where the solid waste problem has assumed crisis proportions. The agreement in this respect was signed between the Sindh Solid Waste Management Board and Chinese company Wuzung, Radio Pakistan reported.

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Gone to waste: How India is drowning in garbage

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Gone to waste: How India is drowning in garbage

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An article from the Hindustan Times explaining how India's largest cities have become surrounded by trash. Living with huge amounts of trash and odor has become the norm. They have nowhere to send it and it keeps building

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Travelling from central Delhi towards Ghazipur in the city's east, the first warning that you get of the approaching landfill is the sight of circling birds of prey. The mound of waste itself becomes visible much before one is assaulted by its stench. Smoke rises steadily from the pile, as the decomposing waste generates highly combustible methane gas.

None of this bothers 10-year-old Jeevan and 12-year-old Devender as they make their way to the top. For years, the two have spent much of their time at the Ghazipur landfill - picking, sorting and selling waste. Without the protection of gloves or masks, the boys, like most ragpickers working at dumping sites across India, are vulnerable to infections and illnesses. "Often we cut ourselves on bits of discarded glass or metal," says Jeevan. But they show no animosity towards the waste that helps them earn a living.

Not just the ragpickers, most of those living and working in the neighbourhood have made peace with the trash. Two girls take a shortcut through the landfill on their way to the neighbouring dairy. A couple walks hand-in-hand through the dump. Markets, houses and places of worship dot the land just outside the 32-year-old landfill - in blatant disregard of the specifications introduced in the Municipal Solid Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000, which requires landfills to be "away from habitation clusters".

An officer at the Central Pollution Control Board says existing landfills are facing problems because of encroachment. "The old dump sites had no buffer zone," he says.

When it comes to waste management in India, little is the way it's meant to be. Mumbai literally raised a stink recently when a fire broke out at the Deonar landfill, severely compromising air quality in the city. The national capital too is fast becoming one huge garbage dump with civic body sanitation workers on a strike to protest against non-payment of salaries.

"We need to learn from Sweden, which is a zero waste country. We need to learn from countries like Sri Lanka, which is segregating its waste, or Bhutan where everybody is conscious to not pollute their land," says Swati Singh Sambyal, programme officer, sustainable industrialisation, Centre for Science and Environment.

While a landfill fire or a strike by workers is not an everyday issue, activists insist we are following a flawed system of waste disposal and management. The metro cities and major economic hubs generate the maximum volume of waste, but a survey of 20 smaller cities selected to be developed as smart cities show that most are struggling to manage waste. And activists feel The Smart City planhas not given as much weightage to management of waste as it has to infrastructure and development. The Municipal Solid Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000 gives detailed specifications for collection, segregation, storage, transportation, processing and disposal of MSW.

This includes directives to municipal authorities to organise awareness programmes for citizens to encourage segregation and recycling. Most activists too push for segregation at source and feel a strict framework of laws and the fear of penalty is needed to make people comply. "Our policy has to mandate segregation and penalise all households and institutions that do not segregate at source," says Sambyal.

In its absence, most people do not even bother to make the most basic dry and wet waste segregation. "Whatever little recycling is happening is because of our waste pickers, who are recycling about 20-25% of our waste. The government should make them contract employees and provide them with space to work. Formal recognition will give them regulated work hours, pay and health benefits," says Chitra Mukherjee, head of programmes, operations, Chintan, an NGO.

In Bhopura near the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, Chintan runs a waste recycling unit where approximately 70 wastepickers work in hygienic conditions. The dry waste is recycled and wet waste composted. "Only 10-15 per cent of the waste that we get is sent to landfills," says Jai Prakash Choudhury, secretary of the Safai Sena, a registered organisation of waste pickers and recyclers who work alongside Chintan to run waste recycling units like the one in Bhopura.

Instead, what the government is doing is looking for more landfills when even the existing ones are flawed. "Many municipalities simply dump the waste and claim these dumps are landfills. Landfilling should be done only for inorganic wastes and the rejects after processing.

The landfilled waste should be compacted and put under soil cover daily so that there is no fear of pollution," says the CPCB official. With land being at a premium across urban India, most landfills in the country are also way past the saturation period. "Improper waste management causes problems such as air pollution from burning of wastes both at landfill sites and in open areas and pollution of groundwater (from leachate - the liquid residue that forms as water seeps through contaminated areas and mixes with surface and groundwater)," says Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director, World Health Organisation (South-East Asia Region).

At the Ghazipur landfill site, where the civic body is running a waste-to-energy plant on trial, locals complain of pollution. Last year, the National Green Tribunal ordered an inspection of the waste-to-energy plant in the capital's Okhla area after residents raised similar concerns.

"Plastic and metals are the major source of the calorific value of the waste. The combustion of plastics gives rise to highly toxic pollutants," says Sambyal. The CPCB officer, however, feels such plants can be operated without causing environmental pollution if proper measures are installed. While that may or may not be true, Sambyal believes the very model is not correct for India.

"Fifty-five per cent of our waste is organic, thus its calorific value is low, unlike in countries like Germany and Sweden, where the majority of waste that goes to incinerators has high content of plastic and packaging material," she points out. Sambyal pushes for decentralisation in waste management, where waste is segregated and treated locally.

"Our state policy must discourage landfills. In no time, these dump sites will catch fire, which are often difficult to extinguish because they burn through methane, plastic, and other highly flammable substances," she warns. The fire at Deonar was finally extinguished on Friday, 10 days after it broke out. Unless we take stock of our waste management, the only thing that might remain uncertain is the site of the next crisis.

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Gone to waste: How India is drowning in garbage

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Travelling from central Delhi towards Ghazipur in the city's east, the first warning that you get of the approaching landfill is the sight of circling birds of prey. The mound of waste itself becomes visible much before one is assaulted by its stench.

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China produces about one-third of plastic waste polluting the world's oceans

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China produces about one-third of plastic waste polluting the world's oceans

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An article from the South China Morning Post confirming the disposal of trash remains mainly unregulated and burning is creating a toxic mess. There is no value in recycling plastic. Plastic bags have been banned, but there is little to no enforcement of the ban.

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China produces about a third of plastic waste polluting the world's oceans, says report

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Comprehensive study reveals that of the 8m tonnes worldwide that pollute the sea every year up to 3.5m tonnes is from mainland cities

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Environmentalists in San Francisco comb the surrounding area Bay waters scooping up debris and charting the type of debris and where it is found using GPS interface to gather data.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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You may have heard about the Texas-sized island of plastic trash swirling in the center of the Pacific Ocean. But did you know we have our own pockets of floating trash right here in San Francisco Bay?

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A book by Paul Showers and illustrated by Randy Chewning. Story follows a garbage truck to the llandfill to see how trash keeps piling up. The book then explains how we deal with the problem of too much trash and provides ideas for easy ways to be a part of the solution.

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The National Oceanic and Atomospheric Adminstration explains what a garbage patch is and isn't, what we know and don't know, and what we can do about this ocean-sized problem through podcasts, videos, pictures, studies, and reports.

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A book by Jonah Winter about a true story that happened in New York. A great way to introduce children to understanding that disposing of garbage can be more difficult than imagined.