GREEN SCHOOLS - LITTER & WASTE MANAGEMENT

The first theme we completed was Litter & Waste Management.

We really had a huge litter problem then and indulged in many bad practices one of which was burning our rubbish in an incinerator. Having got advice from Ms Claire Dunne of Offaly County Council we set up a Green School Committeee involving teachers (2), parents (2), school ancillary staff(2) and reps from every class. Our first project was to carry out an environmental reviewto see where the problem started. Having completed the survey we found out that we were sending a huge amount of litter to the Offaly County Council landfill site. Then set out an action plan to reduce the amount of litter.

Some of the strategies used to reduce this litter were as follows:

- Three Bin System in each classroom
- Motto; Reduce, Re-use, Re-cycle 
- No food allowed out in yard 
- Use of some recyled material in Art lessons 
- No more burning of waste 
- A major Spring clean up 
- A healthy Lunch policy 
- Wrapping that came with lunches went home 
- Involved the whole School community with cross-curricular projects, such aswart , essays poems etc 
- Kept the wider community informed through regular press releases 
- Had our own Green School slogan

"THIS IS A LITTER FREE ZONE. BUT I CAN'T KEEP IT ON MY OWN. TO BE CLEAN IS COOL. LET'S BE PROUD OF OUR SCHOOL."

During the course of our campaign we succeeded in reducing the amount of litter sent to landfill by 76% and duly won the our first Green School Flag and also became Repak Re-cycling School of the Year in 2005.