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Litter-free at Massey Primary School
19th November 2008
Massey Primary School were increasingly concerned with litter problems in the school grounds and have taken a novel approach to fixing things – they have removed all their litter bins!
Students at the school have learnt to take any litter home with them, as have locals who use the school grounds. Overflowing litter bins, leading to further dumping of rubbish, are a thing of the past and the school is reaping the financial rewards in the reduction in the amount of rubbish they now have to dispose of.
Much of the litter generated by the school came from lunchbox wrappings and left-over food scraps. The school set up recycling and food scraps bins for each classroom. Waitakere City Council collects glass bottles and jars, cans, and grades 1-7 plastic containers – which includes yoghurt pots – in the fortnightly recycling collection. The foodscraps are taken home by a teacher to feed chickens. Any non-recyclable and non-compostable items go back into the lunchbox for disposal at home.
Be A Tidy Kiwi helped the transition by giving demonstrations on how to achieve a litter-free lunch by using a divided lunch box and encouraging students to ask their parents to buy food with as little packaging as possible so that individually wrapped items – such as muesli bars and small bags of chips – are not needed. The cost savings of making these choices were also pointed out - multibags of chips cost almost twice as much as a similar weight of chips in a single bag!
Students then signed a certificate pledging to be Tidy Kiwis and to keep their school and community free of litter, and all received a Be a Tidy Kiwi lunch box sticker - a visual reminder of their pledge.
In this bold move, the school not only cut its own rubbish costs, but also reduced the amount of waste going to landfill since lunchboxes now contain less waste and much more is recycled or taken as chicken feed. Well done Massey Primary School!
