Back in March, when the sun was both shining and warm, everyone was enjoying their playtime on the school field. Well, almost everyone! Some of the girls in Year 3 were not so happy when they discovered the LITTER that had started to decorate our field …. plastic bottles, chocolate wrappers, crisp packets, milk cartons, plastic straw packets, old felt pens, bits of cardboard and paper ….
We knew the birds hadn’t brought them, or the rabbits or the cows or the sheep that live next door!
When we looked at this litter we all agreed that our ‘rubbish’ was starting to become a problem. First we made some posters to try and remind everyone about how important it is to PUT OUR RUBBISH IN THE BIN …..
But then we started to think about
‘What happens to the rubbish that we put in the bin?’
We know the bin men come and take it away but
WHERE do they take it and WHAT do they do with it?
For the next four weeks we found out more information and we started to discover some very worrying FACTS!
We also decided that our posters would not fix the problem on their own …
We would have to get brave enough to stand up in assembly and tell everyone else!
This week Abi, Connie Boo, Eloise, Fleur, Georgia, Lily, Maisey, Millie and Sasha shared some of these ‘RUBBISH’ FACTS in our ECO assembly:
(Here are some of the most important facts that they shared)
Abi: The total amount of rubbish, thrown out in one year by homes across the
= 29 million tonnes … that’s the same weight as 5 MILLION African elephants!
(it would take a lot of very deep holes to hide that many elephants but that’s what we try to do with most of our rubbish in ‘land fill’ sites)
Maisey: Every year we throw away 13million steel cans. If we stacked them one on top of the other we could build three towers that would reach all the way to the moon!
We also found out that the rubbish we bury in the ground does not disappear (decompose) for a very long time, for example:
Georgia: A plastic carrier bag will last for almost 10 years
Eloise: Plastic bottles will take at least 50 years to disappear
Maisey: A drinks can like a ‘coke’ can, will take 100 years to rust away
Connie Boo: And disposable nappies can take up to 500 years to rot away!
WOULD YOU WANT ALL THAT RUBBISH AT THE BOTTOM OF YOUR GARDEN?
So what COULD we do? What SHOULD we do?
REDUCE ? REUSE ? RECYCLE ?
Eloise: For example …
We all use plastic bottles …. Some people buy a new one almost every day ….
Sasha: If everyone in our school did that we would have thrown away more than 7,000 plastic bottles into our school rubbish bin in one school year.
Fleur: We could REDUCE this number by REUSING our bottles.
Instead of buying new ones we should refill them with drinks we make at home.
Sasha: When the bottles get too old and cracked we can send them away to be RECYCLED.
Did you know that old plastic bottles can be turned into new carpets and clothes.
Millie: Drink cans can also be RECYCLED and turned into new cars or washing machines.
Connie Boo: The energy saved by recycling one drink can is enough to power a TV for up to 6 hours!
BUT sometimes it is not enough just to RECYCLE …
One of the first things we learned to RECYCLE at our school was our PAPER …
We use a
Last year we spent over £500 just on paper …..
We used more than 100,000 sheets of A4 paper ….
That means we all used at least 1,000 sheets EACH!
That’s not even counting all the paper we used in our exercise books!
Every day we fill up our RECYCLING boxes with used paper …
You might think that is ‘good news’ BUT when our Eco Warriors looked at the paper inside our recycling boxes they got a nasty surprise …..
Lots of the paper that had been thrown away had hardly been used at all ….
Some of it had just a few words or one or two little marks on it …..
People were throwing their paper away and taking another new piece when they could have rubbed out their mistakes or simply turned the paper over ….
We have got into BAD HABITS and we are wasting a lot of paper …
We must keep RECYCLING but we must ALSO try to REDUCE the amount of paper we use and waste
STOP and THINK:
Do you always need a brand new piece of paper for everything you do?
If you make a mistake can you rub it out or use the other side?
Can you put your used paper in the SCRAP PAPER drawer so that you or someone else can use the other clean side for something else?
Remember, when both sides of the paper has been used, put it in the RECYCLE bin!
The girls in Year 3 and our Eco Warriors are all trying to learn good habits …
TO REDUCE, REUSE and RECYCLE
But if we want to make our school, our homes and our whole world a place where everyone can enjoy a good, happy and healthy life …. It needs ALL of us to agree to learn GOOD HABITS too …..
What could you REDUCE, REUSE or RECYCLE today?
P.S. Be warned …your Eco warriors will now be checking the contents of your Recycling bins ….
