The school year is right around the corner, and CSWD is ready to help you kick things off strong!
If you’re not familiar with what CSWD offers—all at no cost to Chittenden County PreK–College schools—here’s just a sampling of what we can bring to your classrooms, cafeterias, and beyond.
Classes:
Trash Talkin’ & the 3 R’s explores where unwanted items go when you are finished with them and why it’s important to Stop! Think! Sort It Out! It’s a great refresher for CSWD’s Recycle Rally competition this fall.
Speaking of the Recycle Rally competition, registration opens Sept. 15th with the Rally taking place Oct. 6-Nov. 7. So mark the calendars and rally the troops, this year’s Rally comes with a $500 prize!
A Future Built on Batteries dives into questions like “Where do batteries come from?” “What happens to them when they run out of juice?” “Why should we care about recycling them?” Followed by some hands-on experience sorting out the different types of batteries we encounter every day. This is great practice as we gear up for the 2026 Battery Blitz.
With the goal of teaching kids about the importance of recycling batteries and encouraging collection campaigns, The Battery Blitz combines classroom instruction and hands-on lessons with community engagement. As batteries are banned from landfills in Vermont, the contest presented an interactive opportunity to engage local youth in an accessible sustainability challenge. Stay tuned for more details on the 2026 Battery Blitz.
Dig into the cyclical journey of your lunchtime leftovers from the compost bucket to nutrient rich soil and back to the food on your plate w/Compost Critters (Grades Prek-5) or The Dirt On Composting (MS and HS). Students will have a lot of fun discovering who is doing the composting, what is compostable and why it is important to collect food scraps for composting.
Experiential Learning
Trash On the Lawn Day (TOLD), is a hands-on event that turns your everyday trash into a learning opportunity. Together, we’ll dump it, sort it, and see how well your school is doing at recycling, composting, and keeping usable items out of the landfill. The results can highlight money-saving opportunities, spark conversations about environmental impact, and even give classrooms real data to crunch.
CSWD will bring all of the supplies and will run the show. All your team needs to do is bring the student (and adult) volunteers to collect, dig in and discover!
Take a tour of our facilities:
See how millions of pounds of recyclables, food scraps, and household hazardous waste are safely managed each year. Tours of CSWD’s Materials Recycling Facility (MRF), Organics Recycling Facility (ORF), Environmental Depot and Drop-Off Centers give students a behind-the-scenes look at how it all works—and why sorting matters.
Age and group size limits apply.
Technical Assistance
From on-site assessments of your school’s materials management systems and staff training to resources like grants and bins, CSWD offers expert support to help schools meet state, local, and federal requirements.
Whether you’re a teacher seeking hands-on lessons, a parent hoping for a sorting refresher at your child’s school, or part of the food service team figuring out what can be composted—Recycle Rhonda is excited to get back to school and help make it happen!
Rhonda Mace
School Outreach Coordinator
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Phone: 802-872-8100 x214
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Email: rmace@cswd.net