Waste Audit

Learning Objectives

• Investigate the different categories of school waste and ways of monitoring the volume.
• Record and analyse waste data.

Curriculum Links

• Maths
• Science
• Citizenship

Materials:

• Bagged rubbish;
• old carrier bags (eight for each group);
• 10-20 large bin bags;
• spring balances or Newton meters;
• ground sheet/floor covers;
• clipboards with copies of the recording sheet;
• rubber gloves (one pair for each adult and child);
• overalls, or old clothing.

A. Preparation

1. Identify an ‘average’ school day on which you will audit your school’s waste (e.g. not during events, the end of term clear out, or when groups are out of school). Let all staff know when the audit will take place.
2. Carry out a risk assessment for the activity.
3. You may want to send a letter home to parents to inform them about the activity, ask them to provide clothing and possibly to request adult volunteers to support the activity in school.
4. Ask the site manager/caretaker to save one day’s waste from the entire school, including non teaching areas such as bathrooms, staff rooms, offices and external areas, e.g. the playground.
5. Ask the site manager/caretaker to look through the bags to remove sharp objects and label each bag with the area of the school it came from (e.g. classroom 1, playground). Ensure that bags of food waste are clearly labelled and kept separately. Store all bags of waste safely overnight.

B. The audit

1. Explain health and safety issues to the students, for example, gloves must be worn before touching any waste, students should call an adult if they see any sharp objects in the rubbish etc.
2. Weigh all bags containing food waste (e.g. from the canteen) with the whole class, log the results in grams on the recording sheet and dispose of the waste in the usual manner.
3. Divide a class into three to four groups. Each group should have a ground sheet to work around, a recording sheet and pencil, and a set of spring balances or Newton meters. Each child should wear protective rubber gloves.
4. Each group should empty the contents of one bag of rubbish at a time onto the plastic mat and sort it into the different types of waste shown on the recording sheet.
5. Groups should have a separate carrier bag for each waste type. They will sort the waste into these bags and weigh them using an appropriate spring balance or Newton meter. Log the results on the recording sheet.
6. Once the contents of the carrier bags in each group have been weighed and recorded, empty them into larger bin bags and re-use the carrier bag.
7. When all bags have been sorted and the data has been recorded, dispose of the waste and recyclables in the usual manner.

C. The follow up

1. The next time the group meets, calculate the daily, weekly and annual waste totals for the whole school. Multiply daily totals by five for the weekly results, and the weekly totals by 38 weeks (the average number of weeks per year spent at school). Work out the percentage of different types of waste produced.
2. Compare waste data from different areas around your school and identify waste ‘hot-spots’.
3. Discuss your findings. What are the most common types of waste? Is any of it recyclable? Which type of waste would make the biggest difference if recycled?
4. Use the information from your waste audit to plan or improve your recycling scheme as outlined in the ‘Action plan’ activity.

Ways to adapt and extend the activity

• If you don’t have the necessary equipment, attach recording sheets to each bin on the evening before the audit. Get everyone to tally what they throw in the bin. This avoids the need for sorting the waste by hand and is particularly suitable for smaller schools. The tallies can be used to estimate the relative proportions of materials in each area.
• Ask the students to note down at least five action points that could reduce the school’s waste. As a group, decide what the top five actions are and break them into smaller, achievable steps.
• Whilst sorting the waste, get pupils to note down the most common waste items. How could you reduce this type of waste?
• Present your findings to the rest of the school through an assembly or newsletter.
• Repeat your audit after you have set up or improved your recycling scheme. This will show if your recycling system and action plan is effective. It also identifies areas which require further work.

Top tip

Why not contact your local authority recycling department to see if there is anyone that can come and help you run this activity?

PUPILS WORKSHEET: WASTE AUDIT

Learning Objectives

• Interpret data from the waste audit.
• Evaluate needs arising from the audit data.
• Provide realistic solutions to these needs.
• Co-operate effectively as a group.

Curriculum Links

• English
• Science
• Geography
• Citizenship

A. Preparation

1. Before this activity, you should carry out a waste audit (see ‘Waste audit’ activity).
2. If you are about to set up a new recycling scheme, assess the data from your waste audit and contact your local authority to discuss recycling collections for your school (see ‘Organising your school’s recycling to be collected’ in this Action Pack). Liaise with your bursar, site manager/caretaker and the school management to find out about existing rubbish collections, costs and frequency.

B. Action plan

1. Waste audit review

• As a class, discuss the environmental benefits of recycling outlined in this Action Pack, see the section on ‘Environmental Benefits’.
• Present the data collated from the waste audit and, as a class, identify the waste ‘hot spots’, and most common types of waste found at the school. Discuss why certain locations and materials present greater problems than others and agree likely explanations.

2. Group brainstorming

• With these explanations agreed, break the class up into smaller groups and come up with solutions to the school’s waste issues. Groups can be assigned specific hot spots or materials to address. Alternatively all groups can be assigned the same prominent waste issues to achieve a greater variety of interesting solutions.
• Student groups can use the template overleaf to draw up their suggestions.
• As a class, discuss and agree which proposed solutions will be most effective.
• Collate these agreed solutions into a final action plan, using the template provided overleaf.
• Assign tasks to appropriate individuals within the class and across the school, and agree realistic timeframes in which tasks should be completed.

3. Execute your tasks

Assign some class time for your students to carry out the activities they have assigned themselves and to notify other staff and students of the responsibilities assigned to them. The tasks will depend on whether you already recycle at school or are about to set up a new recycling scheme.

Some examples of action plan tasks are listed below:

• Provide training to staff and pupils on what materials can be recycled at your school and where. For example you can involve students in preparing a training session for their classmates where they will discuss issues such as contamination (throwing the wrong material into the wrong bin) and explain the benefits of recycling.
• Distribute recycling containers and clearly label them. Students can download, print and attach the easily recognisable  labels (available at http://www.recycling-for-charity.com) to the recycling containers.
• Clearly mark recycling areas, for example by putting up awareness posters (also available athttp://www.recycling-for-charity.com), so everyone knows where the containers are and what should go in them.
• Let everyone know about the new recycling scheme and prepare an assembly or newsletter to introduce the system.

C. The follow up

1. Set a review date when you will revisit your action plan as a group to see how far you have come and identify what else you can do.
2. Schedule a follow up waste audit after a few months to measure the effectiveness of your scheme.

Extension ideas

• Add a section on recycling to your school’s website. This could include details of key people involved and a regular recycling newsletter.
• Develop recycling training sessions for the classroom.
• Regularly prepare an assembly to share recycling results, achievements and development plans for the future.
• Prepare a school notice board showing graphs of results and recycling achievements.
• Involve the local press and radio to let everyone know about the school’s scheme.
• Team up with another school in the area to share ideas via the internet.
• Pupils can develop a database with the help of spreadsheet software packages and record recycling information, draw graphs and analyse the data.

Top tip

It may be helpful to contact your local authority before undertaking this activity with your pupils to see what actions would be feasible in your area and manage pupils’ expectations.

EXAMPLE: ACTION PLAN

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPOSIBILITY

Due to a large increase in worldwide communications by means of television and the internet nowadays the importance of the “public picture” of a company is growing in importance. While before the commercial success and the responsibility towards shareholders was focused in decision making of companies, more and more of them discover CSR as a necessary instrument within the corporate strategy and corporate communications.

Corporate Social Responsibility can target different areas within a corporate structure or within corporate public behavior. Within the past years especially Corporate Social Responsibility towards the Environment has grown in importance.

A survey of AMR Research discovered that out of 150 companies, spanning multiple industries in the United States, UK, Germany, and France also close to 70% of companies have a dedicated budget for CSR initiatives, with 48% of companies having a dedicated budget for environmental initiatives. The survey was evenly spread across companies of all sizes, from those with less than $100M in revenue to those with more than $5B in revenue, with little variation in percentage dedicated to the initiatives because of size.

So what do companies and organizations expect from CSR and why is it becoming more and more an instrument of competition? It is because CSR is much more than spending money on the environment and talking about it, to demonstrate a “green attitude”. The benefits for the companies are spread over multiple areas:

► Customer satisfaction/loyalty
► To strengthen corporate brand and reputation
► Business opportunities (cost savings, improved profits)
► Compliance to regulatory requirements Moral imperative
► Board of directors enhancing their positive image
► Competitive advantage
► Strategic risk management
► To encourage product innovation
► To elevate employee morale

HOW TO BENEFIT FROM RECYCLING FOR CHARITY?

Contributing to the “Recycling for Charity” program in the Kingdom of Bahrain is a great opportunity for companies, to benefit from several aspects. “Recycling for Charity” is the only:

Bahraini organization, that provides waste segregation for free for domestics to schools, supermarkets and other major meeting points of the country.

► Bahraini organization, that claims to give an average of BD 15 of every ton of waste collected and sold to local charity organizations.

► Professional domestic and corporate waste management system that provides a broad media coverage for the program and its partners.

► Waste management system in Bahrain, that offers tailor made sponsorship and patronage packages to support the companies and organizations CSR campaigns and awareness programs.

ENHANCE YOUR CSR WITH “RECYCLING FOR CHARITY”!

Vote for the environment and segregate waste with “Recycling for Charity”. If needed, consulting for your corporate waste management is provided as well as tailor made solutions containing bins, containers, bailers, compactors and other advanced technology.

Put your CSR program into public by joining one of our sponsorship packages or support poor families in Bahrain with our patronage program.

Benefit your business!

Find out what you can recycle!

Recycling for Charity for commercials recycle paper, cardboard, plastic, plastic bottles, cans, metal, glass, wood and much more…

Setting up a recycling scheme!

To ensure everyone is aware of the recycling scheme, you may want to consider:

• Hosting a recycling day or event to launch the new recycling scheme to employees.  For example, hold a desk recycling amnesty to encourage staff to recycle as much as they can from their desks.
• Train staff to recognise and understand the different materials that can and cannot be included in your recycling collection.
• Put a list or poster above your recycling containers identifying what can be recycled to make sure the correct items are recycled.
• Position recycling containers in a convenient place, so it’s as easy to recycle as it is to throw things away.

Recycling for Charity provides consultancy and materials to support “go green” …

What else can I do?

• Save paper by only printing what you really need to and print double sided so less paper is wasted.  Re-use scrap paper for notes.
• Help charities by recycling at work. Search the internet – old mobile phones, computer equipment, stamps and printer cartridges can all be recycled to raise funds for charity.
• If your company wants to take further environmental measures, visit the Carbon Trust website.