Calling all Imagineers and Innovators!

Participate in a national recycling video and poster contest sponsored by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) and JASON Learning, and you could win a trip to ISRI’s 2020 Annual Convention and Exposition to be held
April 27-30 in Las Vegas, Nevada!

One video and one poster will be selected as a finalist from each of the three grade bands:
K – 4 | 5 – 8 | 9 – 12

Recycling has been a part of human history for centuries. From Paul Revere owning a scrap metal yard to families during the great depression reusing flour sacks to make new clothes, recycling has transformed and been a part of our lives throughout time.

Fast forward to today — Today’s recycling industry involves sophisticated machinery to process and sort different type of recycling materials needed for manufacturing. Recycling has evolved and adapted over the last 200 years to keep up with the different materials entering the recycling stream. Last year, the US recovered and processed approximately 138 million tons of scrap metal, paper, plastics, electronics, textiles, glass and rubber, saving a lot of energy, reducing greenhouse house emissions, and saving natural resources.

Yet, we still face significant challenges and there is still room for improvement.

What will recycling look like in the future?

YOUR CHALLENGE

Your challenge: Create a video OR a poster that imagines what recycling will look like in 50, 75, or even 100 years from now by designing a solution to a current problem in recycling today.

For Grades K-4:
Your solution should:

Identify a specific problem or a related set of problems in recycling.
Show how people have tried to solve the problem in the past.
Imagine and design a new solution!

For Grades 5-12:

Your solution should:

Identify a specific problem or a related set of problems in recycling.
Describe how the technology, the process, or the recycling material has evolved over time. Do your research!
Imagine and design a new solution and show how it integrates lessons learned from the past, whether failures or successes.