The Student Project Guide and Teacher Project Guide give students and teachers a simple but effective framework within which to plan and deliver a recycling project in your school. This can target a single class, a year group, key stage or whole school. You could even include your local community by targeting students’ families or feeder schools.
Why complete a recycling project?
Taking part can deliver immediate benefits for your school, and for the environment. Increasing your recycling rate will reduce your waste, and could therefore save you money. It will reduce the carbon footprint of your school and, if linked to wider activities to improve your school grounds, can contribute to a reduction in litter around the school. It is an ideal way to address waste within your Eco-Schools participation, or to help make real progress within the Sustainable Schools national framework.
The project helps individual students. It also enables students to take responsibility for an aspect of your school’s life. They will use and develop important interpersonal and workplace skills as they work together to plan their project and encourage other students to take positive action. Some students will be able to develop their leadership skills, and all students will enjoy the chance to increase their self-esteem. Participation can contribute to students’ records of their achievements in school, and enhance their opportunities when they leave, whether into continuing education or employment.
What will students do?
Within the project, students can:
- Audit your school’s waste
- Identify where improvements can be made
- Set targets, plan and take real steps to improve recycling facilities
- Plan and execute a campaign to educate and encourage other students to recycle whenever they can
- Measure their success and report back to the school
- Sustain their recycling effort in the longer term.
Learning Outcomes
The project can adapt to support a range of learning outcomes. See the Lesson learning outcomes, particularly Lessons 1 and 4, for Citizenship and PLTS, and Cross-curricular Links for ideas in other subjects.