Barnsley Waste Education Programme with Mrs Brown's Class

In February, Mrs Davie came from Barnsley Council to take Whole School Assembly. She came to teach us the rubbish 3 R's REDUCE, REUSE AND RECYCLE. We were alarmed at her suggestion of using our playground as a landfill site to dump rubbish in, because Barnsley is running out of space for such sites. She had some mind-boggling facts about how long it takes things to decay on landfill sites because the rubbish is squashed down, excluding air and so only very slow anaerobic decomposition can take place. Green waste (like carrots) takes 10 years and plastic, very sadly, never decays and stay there forever!

Mrs Brown's class were challenged to help reduce the amount of rubbish the school throws away and increase the amount we recycle. We first had to determine how much rubbish the school produces and what that rubbish consists of. So, on Mrs Davie second visit, Mrs Brown's class did a Waste Audit to find out. We collected the rubbish thrown away in each area of the school over a 24 - hour period and weighed it. We then sorted it into different materials and weighed how much of each material had been thrown away.

The school produces over 4,000 Kg of rubbish each year. The major problems in school are paper, cardboard and plastic.

During the next session with Mrs Davie the class played "The Rubbish Challenge Game". This was a giant board game where each team competed to be the first to get rid of their rubbish. It gave us lots of ideas for reducing, reusing and recycling rubbish. The team, that came up with the best ideas were able to get rid of bonus items of rubbish.

Our final visit from Mrs Davie was to put together an Action Plan to enable the school to cut down on what it throws away and increase what it reuses and recycles.

The Action Plan includes:

Written by pupils at Doncaster Road Primary School