The Recycling Generation : Children are leading parents by the hand into the land of eco-awareness.

Last year’s celebration of Earth Day at Woodland Hills Elementary School left such a deep impression on Briana Simmons, then a third-grader, that when she got home and saw her father watering down the driveway, she ran to him and told him to stop, offering to sweep it herself. Dad said OK, and the Simmons household hasn’t been the same since.

Now the Simmonses collect recyclable containers, conserve water and give away toys and clothing they don’t need--all thanks to Briana and what she learned at school about saving the environment.

“It’s good to help the Earth,” Briana says. “We won’t be able to live without water. And we shouldn’t cut down trees because, well, they’re beautiful and . . . they’re nice to sit under and dream.”

Numerous other children such as Briana, who are inundated by conservation-related materials distributed at school and pro-environment messages on television, are leading their families by the hand as they embark on the road to save the planet.

Take the Bartlett family of Woodland Hills.

“One day the kids said we shouldn’t take baths anymore,” mother Judi Bartlett says. “They also said we shouldn’t flush the toilets all the time. It’s kind of gross but I’m getting used to it.”

Last year, Mona Russell of West Hills noticed her daughter Jaquelin, 4, “going through the trash and pulling out cans. She told me, ‘Mommy, you’re throwing away things that you can recycle.’ ”

Since then, the Russells collect aluminum cans and cut up the plastic rings that hold six-packs of soda together.

“The rings that you put around the cans, well animals can slip their necks through it and get hurt,” Jaquelin says. “They can’t get them off, so my Mommy cuts them up and then puts them in the trash.”

A jarring incident prompted Peter Froehlich, 10, to get his family involved in recycling on a weekly basis. Three years ago, after a balloon launch at his school in Burbank, the card Peter had tied to his balloon was mailed back to him from the Angeles National Forest. Please don’t litter our forests, a Forest Service employee wrote.

The incident made Peter “feel bad” and impelled his school, Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary School, to permanently cancel its annual balloon launch.

At the Thomas household in Glendale, aerosol cans are taboo, says 13-year-old Rachel. “A friend of mine told me, ‘I’m not going to be your friend if you keep using those aerosol cans--for your own sake--because you’re putting a hole in the ozone layer.’ ”

“Save the Earth” ads on television and information from the Greenpeace organization have turned Rachel into an environmental watchdog in the past two years. She recently instructed her mother to stop using plastic foam cups at work. She and her family recycle paper bags, bottles and cans. And she makes her classmates at Holy Martyrs Ferrahian Armenian School in Encino promise that they will use both sides of the paper they borrow from her.

Bartlett’s three children, ages 9, 11 and 13, persuaded their parents to start collecting cans, bottles, plastics and newspapers for recycling.

“We did some recycling two years ago, but we gave it up because it was a hassle,” Bartlett recalls. “You save all those cans and get $3. It wasn’t worth it. But the kids got on us and we started again.”

Other parents also say that if it weren’t for the children, they wouldn’t be recycling.

“I wonder myself if I would do this if it weren’t for Briana,” Stefania Simmons says. “If I had a can I might dump it if it weren’t for Briana’s watchful eye.”

School activities heavily promote recycling and water conservation. Monthly aluminum can recycling drives at many Valley schools have received increasing support from students and parents. Valley public schools are beginning this month to implement the school district’s master plan for recycling, which includes paper, plastic foam, aluminum trays and milk cartons.

At Emerson Elementary, the student council in January started giving away an ice cream cone for each 100 cans brought in during the monthly recycling drives.

“We got such a tremendous response, now we have a bin from the city on a permanent basis,” Principal Marilyn Ramsey says.

The Emerson school used part of its proceeds from recycling drives during the 1990-91 school year to adopt a California condor and a jaguar at the Los Angeles Zoo. Woodland Hills Elementary’s student council bought flags and planted roses around the campus.

Many parents credit schools for educating their children about environmental issues.

“It all came from the school,” Bartlett says. “That’s where the kids are getting all this. It’s good. We cut our water bill by a third.”

“I first started hearing about recycling from school, my teachers and my friends, and television,” Briana says.

Rachel says, “My science teacher gives us pamphlets on things like taking shorter showers or baths if you like taking long showers, watering the garden at night or early in the morning, sweeping the driveway instead of watering it.”

“Saving water and recycling are ongoing lessons,” says Jeanne Luna, who teaches fourth grade at Woodland Hills Elementary. “It comes up all day long, during social studies, science and reading.”

“We’ve been studying Paul Bunyan, how he hacked up all the trees,” says Anna Liebowitz, a fourth-grade teacher at Canoga Park Elementary. “He was one of America’s heroes, but now Capt. Planet is the new American hero,” Liebowitz says, speaking of the TV cartoon character who tries to save the environment Saturday mornings on the Fox Network.

Liebowitz says environmental issues pervade much of the material she uses as a teacher. Among her teaching aids are the Weekly Reader, a potpourri of current events, many of them about the environment; “Teacher’s Recycling Kit,” courtesy of the Plastic Recycling Corp. of California; and the Earth Day Every Day newsletter published by the Wildlife Federation. She has even received Smogbusters coloring books from the Air Quality Management District.

Liebowitz, an activist since the 1960s, believes that children in elementary school today are going to become tomorrow’s leaders in conservation and environmental protection.

“This generation has more humanitarian values,” she says. “They’re not greedy.

“They’re leading the way already, telling their parents to conserve water and recycle. Children this age have an intense sense of justice, kindness and fairness. We have to catch them when they’re young.”

Schoolchildren are going home to their parents and repeating what their teachers told them or what they read, with the same excitement they have after a trip to a toy store.

“My teacher taught us that when we clean the toilet we should use vinegar,” says Emilia Soriano, 9, who learned from Liebowitz that vinegar is as effective as and cheaper than chemical toilet-bowl cleaners.

While sometimes young students don’t fully comprehend what they hear in class, they do more than parrot their teachers’ ideas. They appear to be implementing them.

“At our party at the end of the school year, no one brought any Styrofoam plates or cups. That’s how I know they got the message home,” Liebowitz says.

Mahshigian is a Burbank writer.