Teacher Earth’s 3R’s

the greenie patch

by Jeneen R. Garcia

published on June 25, 2006

 

 

Hello again, kids! How’s school been so far? Do you know that way back in your grandparents’ time, the three most important subjects were called the “3R’s”? Yup! This stands for reading, ‘riting (writing), and ‘rithmetic (arithmetic or basic math).

 

You kids today are lucky because you get to learn not only these 3R’s, but other things, too, like how to use computers to do homework. But wait, there’s another set of 3R’s you definitely need to know.

 

Straight from Teacher Earth’s mouth, here are the 3R’s we need to learn by heart to keep our environment (and ourselves) healthy:

 

Reduce. This means using or buying less of the things that will just end up in your garbage can. What are these things, you ask? Why, practically everything! Anything with plastic and styro usually goes to the landfill. So when you’re at the mall with your parents, eat at a place that doesn’t use styro to serve food. Take proper care of your plastic pens so you don’t have to keep buying new ones.

 

Reuse. Before you throw anything away, see if you can still use it for something else. Maybe you can use old notebooks as scratch paper, or old magazines for school projects. Try this the next time you put something in the trash. You’ll be surprised at the many ways you can think up to reuse something!

 

Recycle. Do you know that the plastic chair you sit on, and the newspaper you’re reading, came from the trash? Recycling means using chemicals or machines to turn trash, like paper or plastic, into something new again. Even though you don’t have machines at home, you can help recycle by selling plastic and glass bottles, metals, and old newspapers to a junk shop. You can even recycle biodegradable waste yourself by composting.

 

There’s SO much to learn about the 3R’s, and that’s what we’ll be talking about next month. So stay tuned and make sure to visit the greenie patch again for more details.

 

If you keep doing Teacher Earth’s 3R’s, your parents will discover that they’ll save a lot of money (that’s a bigger allowance for you ;-). And of course, you’ll not just keep your homes free from garbage (and free from disease-carrying creatures like rats and roaches), you’ll also prevent your garbage from ending up in our beaches and air.

 

Now just see if Teacher Earth won’t give you an A+ for that!