How do school do for recycling? Intangible benefit or behavior forming and passing changes to their home.
The school will start soonly. We wanted to share our experience with school waste management and kids. Waste sorting needs to start with kids. We would have seen many schools now are starting to work hard on this. Thailand now is growing on the international school market since 2019. Many schools just start operation in mid-2019, so it would be a good opportunity for us to build this knowledge to our children. Through our experiences, we found cases that would be a best practice in terms of how to start. Schools are more than just educated and be better in their own waste management, But it would help pass on knowledge to their house with activities.
Waste Management Activities in schools we found divided in to:
1. Internal waste management — To manage those waste from daily activities with infrastructure bins and collection systems.
2. Activities waste management — Waste Bank is an example of activity in school. It’s work by play and learning process so kids can trade their pre-sorted recyclable for gifts. But those recyclable must be clean. Self Food composting is also a very good activity and helps reduce food waste significantly.
3.Reuse and Recycle program — Many initiatives in school to start producing an upcycling product from students. That we found the product could be from plant pots to upcycling skateboard. And Food waste to compose to use in school’s garden.
These methods need to have a supply to support such as teacher working team, Student leading team. Or even school staff to help support these systems. What is the result that we would expect?
Early learning. Activities create the opportunity for kids to learn and live in a good environment of waste management and form their behavior from a young. And also passing knowledge of how and why we have to sort our waste.
Behavior change. Passing this behavior to their home and family is the key to impact this change to our society. Most parents in these examples said that they have to help their kids to sort for recyclable. So these are a great opportunity
Cost efficiency. Management right will helps school manage their cost in the longterm to prevent cost as a business operation.
The school is one of a place that can create a lot of waste daily so we can have this as our opportunity to supporting kids to learn to save our planet, Passing this impact and knowledge to their family. And get more cost efficiency in your waste management
GEPP Author:
Dome is the Co-founder and CMO of GEPP. He is passionate about building a better world through better waste management thinking method. He is specialized and experienced in implementing waste management goals, infrastructure change advisory for better waste management.