What we’re doing to manage waste sustainability by reducing, reusing, recycling and recovering waste to improve resource efficiency whilst working towards a circular economy.
Meet our Clean Green Waste Team:
P7 captain Ryan H is leading the Waste initiative.
Here is our Waste action plan for this session:
Our 2024/25 progress:
Recycling Information Sessions
At both our Parents Evenings this session, the EA Waste staff have been present and have engaged with our families, sharing information and resources with the parent body.
Junior Jannies
Our Junior Jannies continue to take a leadership role in ensuring each room in our school (extending beyond the classrooms to the staff room, office and SLT offices) is equipped with the bins to recycle waste. When required, they have spoken to classes about contamination within these bins to ensure waste is recycled correctly. They work alongside the school Janitor to carry this duty out on a weekly basis. They have since visited local shops and businesses, to share the same message about recycling waste. They have checked they have different bins for their paper, plastic and general waste and are sorting these appropriately, even providing boxes to do so if they didn’t have one at hand. They felt very official on their visits as they had their ID badges on.
Food Waste Winners
This session we have continued to measure the food waste in the school at lunch time. We have continued to reward the class with the least waste at the end of the week with a certificate and 15 minutes extra play time. We have developed this to have an infant and upper winner as we felt the infant classes were never winning overall. We have shared our food waste posters with the local cafés and Sheltered Housing Complex to encourage them to recycle their food waste correctly too. The Waste team enjoyed visiting these places in the community to share their knowledge about the importance of recycling waste and how much energy it can generate.
Romaquip Visit
This session we enjoyed a visit from the Romaquip lorry to our school. Our Clean Green Team as well as other classes in the school enjoyed coming out to see the lorry and impressed the EAC Waste team with their knowledge about recycling!
Dinner Hall Share Tray
Our Share Tray has continued to be placed in the dinner hall this session, where children will place unopened food items they do not wish to eat, so that instead of it being wasted, it can be eaten by one of their peers who is still hungry.
SHARE TRAY PHOTO
Clothing Recycle Bank
Our school uniform bank continues to run all session and is available to our families at the Community Entrance daily. At school events (discos, fundraisers, concerts) this table is highlighted to encourage people to take what they need. It is well organised and clearly labelled for ease of looking. Seasonal wear continues to be shared at key points through the year and is made available at Parents Evenings and events where the parent body are invited in, as appropriate throughout the session. In addition to this, we have shared our Home Link Practitioners work mobile number on our school communications, asking families to reach out in private, should they be seeking clothing in a certain size and Mrs Bradford will gather and deliver where necessary.
Parent Council Water Bottles
Our Parent Council hosted a Dress Down day, asking for money donations, where the proceeds would go towards providing every P1 pupil with a reusable water bottle. The bottles have been sourced and are in process of being purchased by our Parent Council. We are hopeful to be able to distribute these to P1 and P2 pupils by the end of this session with the aim to roll our further across the school if funds allow, or promote and encourage families to buy themselves.
Next Steps:
We have not yet introduced a battery recycling station, we intend to make this a priority for the start of next session and have signed up with Duracell to get our pack so we are set up for the start of session.
We have continued to retain our strong partnership with NCDT this session. Unfortunately the new Trotters building is not yet completed. Once it is completed, we intend to work closely with the Re-Use Hub, creating joint working to support a circular economy.
Next session, we intend to look at Food Share options, working in Partnership with the Working Men’s Club who run a Food Hub in the community. This session, we arranged a dress down day and asked for donations for the food bank and donated locally to the Food Hub.
