Case study
Saving money for our school
School details
- School name: Stockwell Primary School
- Town: Stockwell, London
- Age range of pupils: 3-11
- Number of pupils: 309
- Number of staff: 40
Reasons for recycling
Stockwell Primary School pays to have their rubbish collected, but their local council offers free recycling collections for schools.The opportunity to save a significant amount of money in rubbish collection charges by setting up a recycling scheme and benefitting the environment at the same time was a real motivator for the school to start recycling.
Approach
“Since introducing recycling we halved the number of rubbish bins our school uses from four to two, which saves us approximately £1,300 per year in waste collection charges. We have three recycling bins and there was no charge for either the bins themselves, or the recycling collection service”
The school council agreed that recycling was an area the school needed to improve on and contacted their local authority. The council provided orange sacks for use in the classrooms as well as an external recycling container and the school also sourced organised green boxes for the classrooms to store the orange sacks in.
The council briefed the whole school during a meeting, explaining the new procedures and which items can be recycled in the scheme.
A dedicated teacher took responsibility for setting up compost bins for fruit and vegetable peelings in the school grounds and contacted Recycool to set up ink cartridge and mobile phone recycling for charity.
Outcome
The scheme has been extremely successful - the school has halved the amount of rubbish it is sending to landfill and has, in the process, also halved its waste disposal costs, achieving a fantastic saving of £1,300 per year.
The school has used the money saved to buy resources, such as water fountains for every classroom.
The school has also raised over £100 for charity by recycling ink cartridges and mobile phones.
Details of recycling scheme
Materials recycled:
• Paper, cardboard, plastic bottles.
• Fruit and vegetable peels.
• Ink cartridges and old mobile phones.
Containers used:
Green boxes with orange sacks inside.
Who collects your school’s recycling?
• Paper, cardboard, plastic bottles - Local authority (Lambeth)
• Fruit and vegetable peels – composted by the school on site
• Ink cartridges and old mobile phones – collected for charity by Recycool
Frequency of collection:
Weekly.
Date/year the recycling scheme was introduced:
2006
Stockwell Primary School's Top tips
- Seeing the changes that recycling has brought and the new resources that can be bought with money saved from rubbish collections motivates staff and pupils to recycle more.
- Ink cartridge and mobile phone collections can also raise money and awareness amongst pupils and parents about the materials that can be recycled.