A group of John Yeates Middle School students is saving the world — one plastic bottle or cardboard box at a time.

With less than a dozen members, the school’s recently formed recycling club is working hard to promote its new recycling program among classmates and teachers.

“It’s important we find a way we can reuse things,” said sixth-grader A’lauren Gilchrist.

“We can change our future if we start recycling now … and keep material off the ground and out of the landfills.

“It’s mostly about changing mindsets and making people realize that they can make a difference.”

John Yeates didn’t have a formal recycling program when she was transferred to the school last fall, said Assistant Principal Wendy VanHosen. Unless teachers took it upon themselves to haul their own recyclables home, everything — including scrap paper, plastic bottles and soda cans — was dumped with the trash.

“We have a lot of leftover paper here,” VanHosen said. “That bothered me.”

So VanHosen applied for and received two grants: one for $500 from AskHRgreen.org, a green public awareness campaign administered by the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission, and one for $150 from the John Yeates PTSA.

Most of the grant is being used to fund the mammoth green recycling bin that now sits behind the school, said VanHosen.

For $50 a month, TFC Recycling — the Chesapeake company that handles residential recycling in Suffolk — empties the bin once a week. TFC staff has also done educational training about recycling with teachers and cafeteria staff, VanHosen said.

Each classroom has an individual box for recyclables that custodians dump weekly, VanHosen said. The club has also bought four 95-gallon recycling collecting cans and placed them around the school for anyone to use, she said.

The recycling club was created to educate and promote recycling; initially, it started with only a couple of students from each grade, VanHosen said.

“I joined because I figured it would be better for Earth … if we take stuff and reuse it,” sixth-grader Keagan Shields said. “If we don’t do more recycling, we are going to use up all of our natural resources.”

The club recently sponsored a school-wide poster contest for recycling. Contest winners include Taylor Newton, 11; Abigail Lockhart, 11; Tamia Holmes, 13; Asia Day, 12; and Gilchrist.

Although details are still being ironed out, the club is also helping sponsor a community Earth Day event, VanHosen said.

Students said they would like to see other schools in Suffolk create similar recycling programs.