A group of students are calling for all businesses and schools to carry out waste audits after discovering their school was generating around 10 shipping containers of waste a year.
Three Marlborough Girls College students wanted their school to cut back so they started a school project that could lead to real change.
Photo: 123rf
As part of an environmental sustainability class, pupils at Marlborough Girls College were tasked with undertaking an action that increased the sustainability of the school.
Three of the students - Shannon McLean, Kitti Imsuree and Michaela Stanton, decided to see if their school could go zero waste.
Before they could look at how to do that - they needed to understand just how much waste the school was already generating.
Before they even started, they identified a problem.
"We noticed that not only do we not have a very good composting system but the only recycling system we have is via the art block with their cardboard, so the paper that gets photocopied for our activities in class, that doesn't get recycled"
Shannon said they decided on a waste audit, to try and find out how much of the schools waste could be recycled and how much could be composted.
So, over the course of three days in early August, all the waste the school generated was collected.
Then, confronted with 80 full rubbish bags, a team of students donned gumboots, overalls and gloves and began sorting more than 500 kilograms of waste into categories.
More than 69 percent of the weight of waste generated by the school was organic material, like greenwaste, food waste and handtowels - all compostable.
"The one that was really big was recyclable paper and plastic stuff and green waste" says Kitti Imsuree, "It was a lot from the garden as well, our school has a lot of plants."
While nearly a fifth of the volume of waste found in the bin were recyclable.
The waste audit estimates that across the 40-weeks in the school year Marlborough Girls High, which has about 1000 students, sends 36.1 tonnes of waste to landfill.
That shocked Shannon.
"It would equal 10 shipping containers of waste created at Marlborough Girls College per year. If we could change that through recycling or composting, that would definitely reduce it by a whole heap," she says.
The audit came with a number of recommendations, but the students have found implementing change is not that simple to do..
"Not only did it mean we had to speak to senior management from our school and students, we needed to consult our groundsmen, finance, enviroschool facillitators about a compost system because we believe that would be the best system to put into our school."
While progress might be slow at the school, Michaela Stanton said the audit has changed her behaviour.
"I now don't use as much single-use plastic, I buy a little bit more in bulk and use containers for my lunchbox," she says."We also had an idea about a concession card for an award to work towards, putting a value on recycling which can help change behaviours."
While they're still working on changing their schools policies, Shannon urges others to take a closer look at just how much they're sending to landfill.
"We put out the challenge to every business and school.. it's really eye opening to audit your waste... it makes you aware of what you're doing, they may even be a chance for one day a policy out there to make sure all businesses and school have a recycling and compost system."
