Hosted by SALL , contributed by ShamirS on 3 February 2023
Students leave trash and waste in various places in the school and especially in the public areas.
The main waste is food and snack packaging, food scraps. water bottles, soda cans and more.
The school area is very large, and in the public areas there are several old trash cans (mase by wood with lid) for mixed waste.
Students choose to leave waste ans not attend to it for various reasons.
Our goal is to encourage the students/school community to take responsibility for thier personal waste in the public space as part of the "Take the garbage with you project".
We intend to develope responsibility and environmental involvement and the use of standard bins that encourage recycling and separation of waste, and its utilization in the school.
We wish to reduce the amount of waste that is sent to landfill in order to use it as compost for the school gardens.
Background
A field survey we did showed us that there is a lot of waste thrown at the schools yard, hallways and other public places.
The school is a large space with few old wodden garbage bins
We decided to have a survey in which we got an introduction into the student's garbage throwing habits or lack there of.
Aim
Encouraging the students/school community to take responsibility for their personal waste in the public areas as part of the "Take the garbage with You" project.
Following the survey we did, we concluded that we need to increase the responsibility and environmental involvement of the students by the use of standard bins that encourage recycling and separation of waste (12.6% students leave their waste as is because they don't want to touch the current garbage bin).
Around 4% of the students said they don't know where the garbage bins are, therefore we concluded that we need to change the bins and put them in central areas.
Our aim is that by indritucing the students to new garbage bins they will join our effort to make the school cleaner.
Co-creation with societal actors
A big partner and contributor to this project is the Tel Aviv Municipality.
Anat Ehud - Department of Education for Sustainability and Environment, Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality - continuous support throughout the entire process. Liaison to operational and training factors in the local municipality, and planning a future tour to the waste sorting center of Ariel Sharon Park - Hiriya Recycling Park.
Kfir Markovich - In charge of Compost bin in Tel Aviv Jaffa Municipality. Kfir taught the students about the process of composting and built with them a compost bin.
Sivan Rubin - Responsible for community recycling Tel Aviv city. A meeting with community officials/administration for the actual planning of the project on the school grounds. The municipality will provide dedicated posters encouraging the use of garbage bins to separate the waste as well as the garbage bins that will be placed at a number of designated central points. Sivan will assist us with the authority in placing an orange bin for packaging with a volume of 1100 liters in the school.
Implementation
Mapping the waste in the school (quantitative and qualitative) - the members of the group measured the amount of waste produced by the school and also separated waste collected from the bins after a recess at school to check the type of waste.
Printing of t-shirts for the group and partners with the campaign symbol in order to create brotherhood, pride and partnership.
The students built a presentation and will deliver a lesson in all classes about the importance of personal responsibility for their waste in the public areas at the school. In the presentation, the students revealed the plan for changing waste treatment by changing the bins, following the findings of the survey conducted.
Hanging posters throughout the school as well as near the garbage stations encouraging students to throw their waste.
Placement of about 5 recycling stations by bins of different colors in central key places at school.
A final survey that will examine how much the change has affected the throwing habits of students and staff in school and outside of school.
Reflection
As a science teacher, recyling and sustainability is near and dear to my heart. This project has the power to move the school forward and increase the students involment in recyling and taking resposibility of their garbage. We hope that this will be made as a model and will be implemented in other schools.
We held a meeting with the student body, the teachers and faculty and we decided to implement the changes as fast as possible.
The feedback we received was that the process will not be complete if we won't receive an orage bin that can hold 1100L of packages of goods. The municipality helped us to receive such a bin.
Another feedback we received that foe the long run we will need all parties at school to be involved in this project, Fortunatly we succeeded.
Futurel Plans
Our hope is that this project will be copied in other schools and municipalities in Israel.
Regarding the composter our next step will be to see how we can check the possibility of BIO Gas system. Another message that we want to send our students is the idea of using the garbage itself as a step in creating advantages to the community (compost, collecting funds by water bottles and using the funds to improve the neighborhood).
If we achieve these goals we insure less garbage will go to the landfill and that our comunnity will have a cleaner, sustainable future.