Starting a High School or College Recycling Programme
Starting a High School or College Recycling Programme
If you believe your school could benefit from going ‘green’, why not set up your very own recycling programme? It can be an extremely effective technique of managing waste, due to the fact that young people learn by example. A great deal of waste comes from schools, therefore knowing how to dispose of it accordingly would be highly beneficial.
How to set up a programme:
- Announce the programme
Before a recycling programme occurs, it would be ideal to hold a meeting, suggesting how the programme will work and which members of staff will be most involved with the running of the programme. Then, hold a school assembly to describe how the programme will work. It would be best to assign a recycling monitor for the scheme, which will allow the whole process to run much more smoothly.
2. Establish collection points
If you are hoping to start up a programme, one of the most important factors is to locate where recycling bins will be placed. In order for youngsters to dispose of their rubbish properly, they won’t want to go looking for bins, therefore they need to be located in obvious positions. Or, have a large recycling point in a central point of the school where all waste can be collected.
3. Choose recyclables
When starting out, it is best not to overwhelmstudents by expecting them to recycle too many materials at once. Two items would be most suitable to begin with and then build up over time once everyone has got the hang of it. For example, plastic and paper would perhaps be the most common forms of materials to recycle in a school, so it may be best to start off with those.
4. Emptying bins
Once the bins get full, the recycling team should empty the bins into a larger container, ready to be disposed of. Then, the recycling team can either arrange for the waste to be collected or take it to the local recycling station. This is possibly the most important aspect of the programme, as the recyclable material will then be sent off into the big wide world. In terms of making your hard work pay off, it must be distributed correctly and be placed in very capable hands, to avoid being dumped on landfill.
If your school produces a great deal of waste, a recycling programme would be an ideal way to prevent bins from overflowing and having to be collected more than usual. To see the impacts of your positive work, you may not see the benefits until your first recycling collection is due. The amount of waste that can be recycled is immense and schools across the UK should be fulfilling the same goals.
This programme should save your school a great deal of money as mixed recycling collections are much cheaper than general waste, so you are saving money by separating your schools waste into at least mixed recycling and general waste. All these factors can really affect how successful a school recycling system is and the education on how recycling can make a real difference to the environment is massively influential on the wider school.
We are school recycling experts and have supplied over 500 schools across the UK with their bins. If you need any help at all in purchasing your school bins, please reach out to us, and we will happily help
