How Green Are You?

Our upcoming focus for Waste Fortnight in school is all about addressing our Eco Committee pledge to reduce plastic usage. We wanted to find out ways that families are reducing, reusing and recycling at home to see if we could put some ideas together and help improve what we do in school.

Below is a not exhaustive list of ideas and pictures from our families in school before we launched our new project the 'Eco Brick' also on the back of this. We will be trialling those out and launching them just before Waste Fortnight on March 15th 2019.

Ideas to Think about at home...

• Turn off lights and electric items when you leave a room, don't leave items charging all night.
• Recycle your waste thoughtfully, collecting plastic in your Eco brick for a donation towards a community building project, sending items to clothing banks for recycling and cleaning your tins and bottles so they can be easily recycled and not discarded.

In the Kitchen:

• Making your own bread rather than buying it in - much healthier too.
• Buying milk in glass bottles from a local dairy - less plastic and reduces the carbon footprint too, as it's only travelled a short way to reach you.
• Only fill up the kettle with as much water as you need to boil.
• Reuse a cup when getting hot drinks or cold when out - many cafes now will use a refillable for takeaway drinks to save on waste.
• Use biodegradable plastic bags for rubbish rather than normal plastic.

In the Bathroom:

• Try Bamboo tooth brushes  - these can go in the compost once you've removed the bristles for your Eco Bricks.
• Move towards bars of soap and shampoo bars for personal hygiene and natural plant based body mitts to cut down on the amount of plastic you're using the in the bathroom.

In the Garden:

• Hang your washing out to dry on a nice day rather than use a tumble dryer.
• Compositing at home - using food scraps and avoiding tea bags which often are made from plastic in favour of loose tea leaves which are great for the compost.
• Grow your own vegetables and herbs with your fabulous compost and water them from an easy to set up water butt for free rainwater on tap.