Sustainable young minds: our Recycling Workshop at Oldbury Park School

The kids at Oldbury Park Primary’s Eco-club were joined by The University of Worcester SusThingsOut (STO) team this year, for their very own Recycling Workshop. We collected an array of lovely drawings to create brand new recycling posters to decorate the walls and fridges of the children’s homes.

Creating & Demonstrating

During the workshop, the kids sorted a collection of recyclable and non-recyclable items into separate piles, demonstrating their brilliant knowledge of the recycling process. The STO team were really impressed to see how much the Eco-club had learned, as they discussed among themselves which items belong in the recycling and what goes to landfill.

All of the recyclable and non-recyclable items were then drawn by the pupils, which our creative team transformed into a pair of posters for them to take home and remind the families of which items go in which bins. The pupils discussed and all agreed on postcard-sized images to be put on their fridges and bins to be the most useful format for homes.

Recycling at Home

Our involvement with sustainability at Oldbury Park went beyond the recycling workshop. Shortly after the STO team visited the school, we developed even more resources to encourage all the classrooms to start sorting their rubbish.

Supplied by Fortis (now Platform Housing Group), we were able to provide every family at the school with a brand new reusable white bag. Each bag is printed with a recyclability chart to help educate families on where their rubbish should go, as well as listing and categorizing each type of waste. Needless to say, the freebies did not go unappreciated!

Our Class Recycling Tally charts helped the school keep track of each pupil’s family recycling habits, as they counted the numbers of bags of recycling and added these to be totaled on the charts. This created a friendly competition between the classes to see which families did the most recycling. Worcester City Council also kept an eye on the amount collected by the Council recycling lorries, to see if the rates went up during the competition weeks.

By encouraging the pupils to count the amount of recycling, we hope to develop positive waste management habits and keep an eye on contamination. All the while, the kids and year groups could have fun educating their families and helping their class win the competition.

Sustainable Development Goals

Another exciting prospect from our workshop at the school was introducing and further familiarising the pupils with our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We were really pleased to see many of the Eco-club pupils already familiar with the goals and their purpose, a promising indication of a new generation of forward-thinking, sustainable young minds.

Want to learn more? Read on about our Sustainability and Recycling workshop on the University of Worcester website.

Images (above): This project worked with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 13 and 17. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which recognise that ending poverty goes hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.  (United Nations 2015).