We have focussed on 3 different plastic areas:
- plastic drinks / water bottles - as we found these made up a lot of our current usage. Each classroom now has recycling bags and posters so students know they can put their bottles in the recycling bag and not the bin
- crisp packet / sweet wrappers - as these were high on our litter pick. They are usually difficult to recycle but we collect them in the canteen and then teachers take the soft plastics to supermarket containers weekly
- pen recyling - again because we found out during our audit that we use a lot of pens, highlighters and whiteboard pens that all go in the bin at the moment. Each classroom now has a tin which is labelled with what can be put in them, and then staff will empty them into the box in the staff room when the tin is full. All of the pens we collect will be taken to Ryman stores where they take them to be recycled.
We are going to continue our work to really embedd these practices, and remind both staff and students to use all 3 of these different methods to make a difference to the amount of plastic that we are wasting.
