Waste Audit Term 4 2024

Recently we conducted a waste audit. 

We collected all the red landfill bins from around the school and poured them into piles. 

Then we sorted the rubbish to see what should have been in the recycle bin (yellow), 

compost bin (green) or in soft plastic recycling. 

  

Things in landfill break down very slowly and produce poisonous methane gas. 

The landfills in Auckland and getting bigger and bigger every day. 

We need to try and recycle things or make them into compost instead of just burying them in the ground. 

These things should have been in the recycle bins: 

 

 

 These things should have been in the green compost bins: 

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Here are some of the things that should have been in soft plastic recycling. 

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This is some examples of things that were correctly placed into the red landfill bins: 

 

How many pens can you count? 

                              

We also checked the huge landfill bin in the car park to see what else might have been put directly in there. 

We found... 

These are just 2 of the 4 or 5 bags that were mostly full of paper towels.
We were wondering where they all came from! 

The Results! 

This data is for ALL school areas for 5 days worth of rubbish. 

* Amount that should've been composted: 1.32kg 

* Amount that should've been recycled: 1.51kg

* Amount that should've been put into soft plastic recycling:  0.41kg

* Amount that was correctly placed in the landfill bins: 3.56kg

TOTAL waste: 6.8kg for 5 days. 

Amount that was in the wrong bin: 3.24kg (48%) 

(that is NOT including all the paper towels we found afterwards) 

Positives: 

💚 This works out an average of 1.36kg a day that we are putting into the landfill bins 

- our best ever result! 

💚 We are now seeing less lunchbox wrappers in the bins compared to last time. 

💚 Some classes are now EXPERTS at recycling - Room 5/6/7/8 had only ONE recyclable 

item incorrectly placed in the landfill bin! Ka Pai! 

What Next? 

 P1. Paper Towels

Reminders to all staff & classes to put paper towels in the compost bins. 

We will also research ways to reduce the amount of paper towels we are putting into 

the landfill bin each week.

P2. Soft Plastic 

This appears to be mainly packaging from teacher resources. 

We need to come up with a plan for how we can collect this soft plastic & recycle it. 

P3. Pens 

We want to have less stationery (pens) going to landfill. 

We will research what other schools have done.

We'll make some containers for all classroom to put old broken pens (& batteries) into. 

P4. Recycling- Paper

Reminders to all staff & classes to put paper in the recycle bins.