You may remember back in February that the Eco Committee had decided to try and tackle our litter problem by signing up to Terracycle’s crisp packet recycling scheme. This was because crisp packets are always showing up in large quantities in our litter surveys.

We started out by collecting crisp packets after playtime and lunchtime when pupils would bring their crisp packets into class and deposit them in a bag there to be collected later and taken to a central point in the hall. This wasn’t working as well as we had hoped, as pupils would forget to bring their empty packets indoors.

So we decided to put plastic bins outside in the playgrounds and position them beside the regular mushroom bins where most rubbish is supposed to go. We also added buckets for unwanted fruit or fruit peels so that they could be taken to the large compost bays in the Eco garden. Monitors were appointed to ensure the bins were put out before the morning playtime. At the end of lunchtime, the fruit bins are emptied into the large compost bays in the Eco garden and the crisp packets are taken to a central collection bin in the school hall.

This has been a more successful way to cut down  our litter.  Miss Brooks recently emptied out the large central collection bin in the school hall and stacked all the  crisp packets collected since the end of February in piles of ten packets and these were arranged in rows of ten to make counting easier. There were 1053 crisp packets in total. That is 1053 crisp packets that would probably have ended up dropped in the playground, blown into the street and swept down drains and out to sea where it would add to the plastic pollution problems for marine creatures. We also have a regular supply of fruit peels and apple cores going into our compost bays now, adding to the grass cuttings,  waste paper, cardboard and twigs which we can use in the future in our Eco garden to save money buying compost from outside suppliers. In our last litter survey we saw a drop in the number of crisp packets on the playground or caught up in bushes. The next item we want to tackle at source, that keeps appearing in large numbers in our litter surveys is plastic bottles.