The WOW (Watch our Waste) project forms a key part of our education outreach – helping eco teams or school leadership to make a lasting impact on waste and recycling in schools and the wider community.
Running throughout the academic year, schools must commit to taking action on reducing, reusing and recycling waste, with the support of our education team.
Developed in partnership with Devon County Council, WOW includes several interactive learning opportunities for pupils: these include collection and evaluation of children’s opinions and views on recycling, child-led evidence collecting (to provide comparable data points to track progress), action planning and tasks, peer group dissemination of information and recycling or composting workshops.
Working with our experienced educational team over an extended period of time can help to create community waste champions across the whole school, reducing waste at its source and promoting good behaviours that pupils can take home with them. Our audits and workshops support many aspects of the national curriculum, engaging pupils in their learning using topical environmental issues.
As well as pupil engagement, a WOW project will also include discussions with a range of school staff (e.g. bursars, caretakers, kitchen staff etc…) to ensure the best possible practices around waste and recycling can be promoted and implemented across the school.
WOW is also the perfect ‘waste’ project to help schools earn their next Eco-Schools award. The outcomes of the project – improved recycling and composting systems – could even save money by reducing the school’s waste disposal costs.
Watch our waste: how it works
Step One – waste audit
- Schools who sign up start the project with a first waste audit where pupils and adults sort through the general rubbish generated in a single day at school.
- All of the rubbish is labelled with where it has come from; pupils then weigh it and sort it into materials (e.g. paper, metal, cardboard).
- Each material category is then weighed separately to determine how much of the general waste could have been recycled.
- Any recycling and composting waste is also audited, weighed and checked for contamination.
- The collection of this data provides a baseline of what is happening already in the school or educational setting.
Step two – action plan
- Using the data collected and observations made during the audit an action plan is created with staff and students to help improve what is already happening at the setting. This is written into a report with all the data from the waste audit included.
Step three – taking action
- Using the results and the action plan, pupils and staff take action to monitor and reduce waste. This might be labelling and relocating bins, removing paper towels, or creating posters to remind everyone to just take one paper towel at a time.
- Creating an assembly to report back to the rest of the school what we want them to do better.
- Conversations take place between cleaning staff, caretakers and senior leadership to make sure systems are in place to collect waste in a more effective manner.
Step four – inspiring others to take action
- This might be through activities, workshops, assemblies and events to get everyone on board.
Step five – reauditing waste
- The school undergoes a reaudit along the same lines as before: this demonstrates whether there there has been a reduction in general waste and an increase in recycling.
Step six – celebrating success
- The school comes together to celebrate any successes, and then build on what has already been achieved.
The Devon waste education programme is funded by Devon County Council and is managed by Resource Futures staff.
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