After the harsh winter, the weather is getting warmer and nature is starting to wake up again.

 In a school close to the city center, the teacher Bahar tells the children about "Recycling". 

The subject of the lesson is very interesting for the students. At the end of the lesson, the teacher divides the students into groups of three and asks them to prepare a project on "waste and recycling". 

Yağmur, Sude and Toprak wants to carry out this project together. They start to think about where to start. It is Sude who breaks the silence. She turns to his friends and says, 

Sude : "First of all, we should address the issue of waste. We should tell our environment about the classification of waste and its contributions when it is recycled, and we should do something to make this behavior a habit for people." 

    It is a great idea! So they decide to take action. But they don't know where to start. Relatives, classmates or friends? So they start from school.  

Sude is the one who comes up with the first idea to convince his classmates to believe in the importance of recycling..

First, she will ask them to throw their rubbish into separate bins, except for food. 

Then, in collaboration with the art teacher, she will separate the trash and turn it into useful items again.

In this way, the importance of recycling will be understood by the students. They will collaborate and .

Toprak, undertakes 

the investigation of the types of wastes duty

  Toprak, undertakes the investigation of the types of wastes duty. After school while he is walking to home with his grandfather, they talk about the day.

Toprak tells his grandfather about the project given by Bahar teacher and his task in this project. 

And his grandfather decides to take Toprak to the garbage collection site outside the city.When he gets out of town by car, Toprak gets curious and asks:

Where are we  going grandpa?

Calm down my boy ! It’s just a surprise.

When his grandfather stopped the car, Toprak realized a huge land with plastics, glasses, metal wastes ,electronic wastes,organic wastes,battaries ,bags,a lot of old items that were broken.

 Toprak gets excited but when he looks at his grandfather’s face , he found out  a little disappointment in his face.Toprak doesn’t understand why? And gets upset.

His grandfather starts telling with full of tears in his eyes;

 Ten years ago that we used to have picnics here, there were many animals around, colurful flowers used to bloom in spring ,many kinds of birds used to sing everywhere but you can see a huge dumpster.

 If you want to do something for our environment , I want you to see closely how garbage pollutes the soil and destroys all the living creatures that live here  and that lovely nature.

  Toprak understands the importance of the project beter there. 

As soon he gets home back, Toprak has a phone call with his friends and tells everything he experienced that day. And they start thinking on objectives why we should recycle? How they can explain recycling, reusing, reducing and How they can increase awareness?....

    Toprak talks to the environmental protection teacher, Otilia. She realizes his interest in nature protection and tells them about the 3Rs-Reduction, Reusing, Recycling, in the context of household waste, which comes from homes, shops, small businesses, schools, public administration, etc. And this is where the whole discussion begins:

Toprak –Household waste is the most visible to us. 

Otilia-Yes it is! But why are they the most visible? 

Toprak –Because we produce them in our homes, that is, we buy food and throw away the packaging, which can be made of paper, plastic or sometimes wood. 

Otilia -Yes. You are right! And where do we throw these packages and not forget about food scraps… 

Toprak-We have to throw them away, but not anyway! 

Otilia -It is! We must collect them selectively so that they can be taken to recycling, composting or landfill. But do we have to throw them all away?

Toprak-You're right! They can be reused. For example, a plastic bottle can be turned into a pot, right?

Otilia -Yes it is! And I think it would be nice to gather ideas on how we can reuse waste…

Toprak decides to work on recycling at school, and after talking with his teacher, he considers creating boxes that allow separate collection of paper, plastic and batteries in all classes. After creating the recycling bins with his friends, he gets permission from the principals to put these boxes in all classes. Toprak also asks the staff working in the school cafeteria to separate before throwing away the garbage. Organic wastes in the cafeteria will be composted and reused for homeless animals.

   Sude, who is very happy to takepart in the project given by Bahar teacher, also thinks what a wonderful team they are! Toprak and Yağmur are great classmates! They agree to meet at the weekend and do a detailed study on the classification of waste online. They will discuss whatever they have learnt about recycling.

    They have gathered useful information and that prompted their curiosity. Knowing that everyone is responsible for this issue, which concerns all humanity, has enabled them to work more willingly. They meet at the weekend and start researching waste types and recycling ways online. In particular, the subject of reusing waste materials as raw materials attracted the attention of Sude. Moreover, she thinks that this is important in terms of preventing environmental pollution. Re-use of used paper in paper production prevents waste of energy in factories. Moreover, there will be no need to cut trees unnecessarily to produce paper. 

    “The more we use our natural resources economically and recycle them effectively, the more future generations will have the opportunity to benefit from natural resources. Having finished their research, they friends decide to meet at school again”

When Yağmur comes home, she sees her little brother making paper boats and paper planes. Just when she is about to get angry with his brother for wasting papers like this, a great idea comes to her mind. Yağmur gives a big “thank you kiss” to her brother. Yağmur, is very excited, so she can't wait for the morning and immediately calls Toprak and Sude. 

    "Pals, we separated our waste, we also did our best to  raise  awareness among people about collecting and separating wastes. However, no matter what we do, we cannot prevent the waste production; but if we can turn the wastes into a new product, then we can truly reach our zero waste goal.” 

Ha,ha.. Sude, you’ve just found our project motto. So, what can we do from wastes? Let's put our ideas right away ".

    This is awesome Yağmur, like a magic!  Change your view and turn the waste into something new!”

    Sude enthusiastically responds ,

Excited about what they wanted to do, the children dispersed to their homes to prepare their recycling projects. By the end of the week, they should have made useful recycling products from waste. Of course, they also knew that for this project, they had to do research and get help.