Hackney Green Champions 2010-11, recycling at Linden Children’s Centre and creating a waste action plan at Morningside school
Schools can create enormous amounts of waste, so much of which goes to landfill or the incinerator. To try and reduce the amount of energy used to burn rubbish and to ease the pressure on landfill sites, ecoACTIVE got involved with a long-term project during 2010-11 along with six Hackney schools to create Hackney Green Champions.
Four primary schools – Baden Powell, Morningside, Nightingale and Springfield – joined Mossbourne Community Academy and Stoke Newington School in a series of five ecoACTIVE workshops with the goal of measuring and reducing the amount of waste their school was creating.
After carrying out a waste audit, the pupils worked together to write an action plan for each of their schools and come up with a campaign to communicate about waste to the rest of the school community. Their aim was to get everyone involved in reducing the amount of waste produced as well as managing that waste more effectively, through recycling and composting.
And once the campaign had been rolled out, each group of pupils carried out a second waste audit, to see how successful they’d been. While we haven’t heard yet how they’ve done, we know that the hard work each school put in to the project will inevitably mean less waste being incinerated. This is a great way to cut costs while having a positive impact on the environment – so well done, Hackney Green Champions!
We had great fun at a session at the Linden Children’s Centre in April, where ecoACTIVE had been asked to run a Waste and Recycling workshop. A group of 3-5 year olds took part, looking at a range of materials and using sensory boards to discover how different materials feel.
We talked about different types of waste, and what you can do with them all – not just throwing things away! The children played a game in which they matched different items of waste to pictures, and finished the session by making some recycled paper out of waste paper that they had at the Linden Centre. This was enjoyed by all – and is a regular favourite amongst nursery and primary age children!
Creating a waste action plan at Morningside school
