Ailgylchu yn Ysgol San Sior Recycling at Ysgol San Sior By Evie, Erin,Gemma, Gus, Nancy, Aisha, Freya and Katie
Each year we carry out an environmental audit of the school. We look at : litter, recycling, energy efficiency, transport, healthy living, water usage school grounds. We put the audit on the school web site so the whole school community can see what we are doing. We then write an Action Plan with targets for the school to see how we can make the school even better.
Recycling One of the questions from the audit asks have we got enough rubbish bins and are they in the right places? This got us thinking
Do we need rubbish bins on the playground? After all - our playtimes are rubbish free anyway. When we looked at the litter on the school grounds it wasn t even ours! All the litter in the school is blown in from the town!
We already had two 1100 litre bins at the school. This cost the school a staggering 1420 to empty each year.
We decided to get rid of the two 1100 litre bins and got a much smaller 240 litre bin instead. This was going to be a challenge! Most houses have a 240 litre bin but have 1-4 people, but we have 240 children and 28 staff!
Next step: We got rid off all the rubbish bins in the classrooms. Now the only bins in the classrooms are recycled paper bins.
Then we bought new recycling bins to put in the hall. This is the only bin that we have in the school and is for rubbish that can t be reused or recycled.
To help the infants at lunchtime we gave Recycle Monitor bibs to the Recycling Monitors. However we encourage all children with packed lunches to take their rubbish home!
Teachers recycling! Our teachers weren't recycling properly so to encourage them we put automatic recycling bins in the staff room! We also took their rubbish bin! It s only 28 steps to the bin in the hall!
Compost We extended our compost bins. The only rubbish at playtimes should be organic rubbish like apple cores, banana skins and usually the chickens will eat the apples and the pheasants will eat the banana. We use the compost every year on our vegetable beds
The compost we make gives us a bounty harvest!
We looked at what the council charges for emptying the other recycling bins were there any other savings we could make? Emptying the Do we recycle Weekly Cost Tin 1.75 Food waste 2.50 Cardboard Plastic free free Paper 1.75 Glass 1.75 Clothes No cost
We contacted Arch Motors Scrap Merchants and they agreed to pay us if we gave them our empty tins! We don t have much of this type of rubbish so we will take this to Arch Motors at the end of the term. So now we will get some money instead of paying for the bins to be emptied. We have reduced our food waste by giving much of the vegetable waste to the chickens, not too much though in case they get sour crop! This saves the school money too We have a recycling bin on the school car park which is emptied for free Clothes are collected by The Salvation Army and lost property sold at the school. Since 4 th March 2011 we have recycled 663kg of clothing ( 132)
Previous Costs (before 2012) 2012 + Cost to school Rubbish 1420 190 Tin 70 +? Food waste 100 100 Cardboard free free Plastic free free Paper 70 zero Glass 70 zero Clothes N/A + 45 per year Batteries free free Total Costs 1730 245 Savings to the school 1485
The money that we saved we gave to the school council and they bought lockers for the juniors.
This year we saved enough money to start a new business Wyau San Sior
We already had a flock of 12 chickens. We bought eggs on ebay and each class from Nursery to Year 6 hatched chicken, pheasant and quail eggs. We now have 96 chickens and they lay about 180 eggs each week. By next year we should be producing about between 300-400 eggs each week and will be selling the eggs in Bodnant Welsh Food Centre from next April onwards.
We have registered with the Egg Inspectorate and each egg is stamped with a unique code before being sold. We record how many eggs are laid each week and we sell the eggs to the parents
Since 22 nd April our hens have laid over 3000 eggs We now sell them in recycled plastic boxes that hold 7 eggs an egg for each day of the week!
Wyau San Sior Here is a parent buying eggs. For a box of 7 eggs it is 1.75.
North Wales Joinery give us huge bags of wood shavings that we use in the coops. This saves us lots of money and is also a way for them to recycle what would otherwise be waste
The infants are really enthusiastic about recycling. Max even started filming the recycling lorries in his street and had over 18,000 hits on YouTube. Conwy Recycling were so impressed that he had more hits than their site so they invited him and his class to the Recycling Depot
Some of this years savings have been used to buy 300 Christmas Trees and 100 palms for a Year 3 enterprise. The trees have been planted on the school field and around the school and will be harvested when the children leave the school in 3 years time. We hope to sell them for 5 each at that time.
All the extra projects might not be possible if we were not recycling because we use the recycling savings to invest in school projects and enterprises The children at our school realise that not only is recycling good for the planet but it can also be good for the pocket ( ) too.
The money that we save also goes to feed the animals at our school as we have a very large menagerie.
Our biggest achievement this year was getting the Tidy Wales Recycling Innovation Award in Cardiff and getting our third Eco Flag
Our recycling efforts led us to being nominated an Eco School by British Gas & Daily Post and getting LED lights for the classrooms and solar panels on the school roof improving the school s energy efficiency but also generating funds towards more school projects.
WE LOVE OUR ECO SCHOOL!
www.sansior.co.uk