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Need help with something?
You might have some questions about the Plastic Clever Schools challenge – that’s understandable!
Take a look at our most commonly asked questions below to find out more about what the Plastic Clever award is.
Don’t see the answer to your question? Drop us a line using our contact form.
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The Essentials
OK, first, thanks for joining 👍
Now, to get started you need to Log in.
Go to the LOGIN option in the main menu.
If it’s your first time logging in, you should change your password using the Set Password option.
The next time you login, you should enter the email address you used when you joined / registered and the password you have chosen for your account.
On Login
When you’ve successfully logged in you’ll see the LOGIN link changes to MY SCHOOL.
Clicking on the MY SCHOOL link takes you to your PROFILE page. From your Profile page you can:
- See your Avatar status (your avatar grows as you progress towards Plastic Clever School status.
- Access the LEVEL RESOURCES designed to help you complete the the Inspire, Investigate and Act levels.
- See your current challenge status.
- SUBMIT evidence to support level completion, or VIEW/EDIT evidence that have have already uploaded. NB. Once evidence has been reviewed and approved, it cannot be edited.
The Basics:
Plastic Clever is a really simple concept – it basically means taking small steps to reduce single-use plastic usage in a way that is manageable for us all. Taking a leap to become completely plastic free sounds like an amazing idea in concept, but is often difficult and demoralising once you look at the amount of plastic you need to reduce.
Becoming a Plastic Clever School just requires your school to take the appropriate action needed to reduce your use of the two main single-use plastic items used in the school environment, which you’ll identify as part of the Plastic Clever programme. Simple, but effective, yeah?
Back in 2018, Damien Hinds MP (the then Education Secretary) set UK schools the challenge of “eliminating” their use of single-use plastics. Mr Hinds said that schools should in particular stop using items such as plastic straws, bags, bottles, and food packaging, and should “start a conversation” with pupils around the damage that plastic does to the environment.
However, since this target was set, the government have done little to help schools reach this target. So, we hope that the Plastic Clever Schools challenge will help schools to smash government targets before the target comes into play next year.
The challenge:
The Plastic Clever Schools Challenge is an initiative designed to help schools in the UK and beyond to lead the way in reducing their single-use plastic usage.
The Plastic Clever Schools Challenge is for ANY school, and is completely free.
The Plastic Clever Schools initiative has three levels to it: Inspire, Investigate, Act.
At each level of the challenge, you will be sent the relevant section of our Teacher and Student Toolkits that will provide you with all the necessary information, evidence criteria, and activities that you will need for that level. Once you’ve completed each level, you’ll need to upload the required evidence on your school profile, accessible via the progress map.
Schools can work at whatever pace suits them, they just need to make sure to upload your evidence after each level is completed to unlock the next one!
Nothing! The Plastic Clever Schools initiative and its resources are completely free to all schools 🙂
uploading evidence:
Evidence is submitted by schools at the end of each level of the challenge – this is then reviewed by a member of our team, who will then send you an email with the details for the next level. The evidence required for each level of the Plastic Clever challenge is outlined in the Teacher Guide and Student Workbook, with a clear tick-list to work through.
The specifics for each Level can be found here: Inspire, Investigate and Act.
NB. You can also submit extra activities that you’ve completed as part of the Plastic Clever Schools challenge – you will be given a bonus point for each extra piece of evidence, which will make you school more likely to win one of the four awards!
Evidence is uploaded via your school’s profile, which is accessible once you have registered and created a login for your school.
Uploading evidence
- Go to your Profile page by clicking on the My School option at the top right of the page. If you can’t see it, you need to login first.
- Scroll down until you see the ‘Evidence Uploaded‘ subheading.
- Click on the ‘Submit New Evidence‘ link.
- Give your evidence a title, select a category (e.g. Level 1 Part 1), add a photo and/or video and some text to add context.
- Tick the checkboxes and then click on Submit.
Your evidence will appear as Pending until the KAP team approve it.
So you don’t exceed the file upload size limit (around 100mb), reduce its file size. If you are not sure how to do this, take a look at this explainer article from Digital Citizen: ‘How to make a video smaller‘
You can view the evidence for your school on your profile using the ‘My School’ tab, or via the ‘Display’ tab if your evidence is set on public (for more information on this, watch the video in the tab above).