What teachers said about the most recent project.

What teachers said about the most recent project.

The following are unsolicited email comments received during the last project:

The puppet show was fantastic. It was the perfect way to kick start the project and all the children and staff are keen to take a practical part. Thanks for that.

Being a large school it has been quite a task organising the weighing but each class is to weigh their own classroom waste and School Council members are taking the lead and are being released from classes every day to weigh communal areas waste at a central weighing area supervised by a teaching assistant. The staff have responded positively on the whole, despite two parents evenings as well this week, and there is very much a team effort with me being part-time. One of our deputy heads is going to collate the results at the end of each week and enter them.

It’s been an interesting first week finding out exactly what we do at school. Some teachers have really got involved and the assembly lessons now have a regular slot on a Tuesday.
For our first week the landfill total is 283.8 kg and the recycling total is 87.9kg.
The NOR is 455 as we also include Nursery's waste in our weighing figures.

We have just this minute had the puppet show and they were great! The children are buzzing.

The happy bin project is up and running in Parnwell and the children are very enthusiastic about the project, they also really enjoyed the puppet show.

We began our weighing in this week and I think we were all surprised about how much we are throwing out! Our caretaker has bought a set of scales for weighing luggage, and we are also using bathroom scales.
The year 5/6 children on the Eco Council presented the first of the Power Points to the school; I have had staff meeting time and attended the support staff briefing this week so I feel we are all getting on board with this project.

We made improvements in all areas except in the waste from the kitchens - that actually went up a little. I think this is going to be the hardest area to change.

All is going well and parents are telling me that it is rubbing off at home as well.

We had a real push on using scrap paper trays within our school this week and the recycling has gone down whilst keeping our waste down which was pleasing. Next week we plan to focus on waste within the dinner hall as this seems to be where most of our rubbish is.

Our heaviest waste is generated by the school kitchen. When we have a special lunch eg. Bonfire night or Halloween our up take of school dinners at least doubles, the waste at least doubles. If we get a large order in to the school packaging increases, or if displays are changed. Our Environmental awareness project has generated a huge amount of waste because the children brought waste from home to school for materials for sculpture, mountains came into school. (We have a class this morning at the New Donarbon Recycling Centre, in all 150 children would have visited the site)
Most of our waste to landfill is from lunch time and we are finding it difficult to reduce this. (nearly 83kg this week!)
We have introduced a 'No Waste Wednesday' but we will just have to keep working on this one.

My best reckoning on the fluctuating recyclables is the type of fruit that the Foundation and KS1 children have delivered under the government scheme. Tomatoes and carrots come in plastic bags but bananas arrive in large, heavy cardboard banana boxes and apples and pears similarly come with a lot of cardboard packaging. Will document this for you next week if you are interested! As we have 180 children receiving the fruit every day that adds up to a lot of waste in a week...

Just to let you know that me and Mark spent the morning with St Mary's
school in St Neots. They were visiting the local Household Waste
Recycling Centre which has recently opened there. They were really proud
of their Happy Bin progress and brought along a copy of their chart to
show us. It was also really obvious that they had been doing lots of
work on waste. The children were very well informed and the teachers
seemed very enthusiastic about the issue. It was great to see that the
momentum had carried on so well in that school because I don't get see
what happens after the puppet show. Another school, Swaffham Bulbeck
have also been in touch and are clearly well immersed in Happy Bin.

Here are Parnwell's final results. I have to say that I am exceptionally pleased with our final week's results, we had a montitoring of dinners being eaten, checks on recycling and my eco-members went round classes ensuring they were composting fruit. They tried very hard in this last week and the dinner monitoring had a huge impact, this is something we plan to continue.
I would like to take this opportunity to tell you how much myself and the children at Parnwell have enjoyed being a part of this project and that I plan to continue to work on reducing our waste as part of our sustainable schools development.

We have enjoyed this project and hope to continue to improve. We are composting more and reusing more paper. Clearly the trick is to make sure that people do not slip back into their old habits!
No Waste Wednesday has shown us that the younger children have had too much food put on to their plates, as very few were able to empty their plate (in week one we had only two children from lower school on the list!). The kitchen staff also have a large composting bin so that less gets thrown away.
The staff have been named and shamed by the children if they have been wasteful at the photocopier too!
The knock on effect of this project has been a renewed effort to switch off lights, computers - as well as the waste we have weighed, the children have taken on board the message that we are trying to reduce our carbon footprint.

The overall response from our pupils was positive with much learning having taken place.I was particularly interested to know if the children had taken the message home and made any changes there as a result of the project. Many have! A Foundation Stage girl reminds her mum not to throw away things that can be used again, as do many older children. Generally many families are recycling more, using different bins for different things and lots of families compost now who were not doing so before. One Year I child made a recycling poster at home to remind the family.

The polar bears made a big impression on all ages. One child talks of adopting a polar bear!

Using paper sensibly also had a significant impact across the age range but particularly with Key Stage 2. Children have highlighted using both sides of paper when possible, recycling even more - one child now has a recycling bin in his bedroom.

Our School Council are keen to do "spot checks" from time to time to monitor our waste management.