Work in Secondary Schools

The Recycling Consortium is currently running education projects in Bristol and North Somerset. Our work in secondary schools runs alongside the setting up and maintenance of recycling schemes and is provided free of charge. For more information about the logistics of school recycling in your area click here.

Assemblies and curriculum workshops

Assemblies are a good way to remind everyone about the importance of recycling, or to raise the profile of waste issues when a new school recycling system is being established.

Workshops linked to the citizenship curriculum:

• Rights and responsibilities – product analysis
• Rubbish Research – the use and mis-use of statistics
• Role Play on a new village landfill site
• The Big Debate – should we have to pay according to how much rubbish we produce?

Workshops linked to the science curriculum:

• Where do they come from where do they go? Looking at the resources and energy used to make / dispose of / recycle common items in our ‘rubbish’ (e.g., aluminium cans.)

Workshops linked to the design technology curriculum:

• The Perfect Packed Lunch - examining the best way to package the food and drinks brought to school in pupils' luncboxes.

Other workshops

TRC Education officers regularly work with other organisations, incorporating workshops on local and global waste issues into events such as Earth Summit, Year 9 Youth Summit, Young Innovations, and Going Global.

Workshops include:

‘Taking Old Bags Shopping’ - should there be a tax on plastic bags to reduce waste in the UK?
‘Getting people to SORT IT!*’
	Drink cans – a local or a global issue?’
	‘Mobile Phones – a local or a global issue?’
	‘Litter or Resource?’

Arts projects
Working with local community artists, we run occasional arts workshops in secondary schools.

Most recently (2004/5), our North Somerset project ran an exciting arts project in three secondary schools. Each school focused on one of the 3Rs, using waste materials to make wonderful art which was later formed an exhibition in The Campus in Worle in July 2005.

Reduce - Priory Community School
Peter Margerum helped pupils make enormous monsters from waste materials. One, measuring 3m x 3m, was constructed from squashed cans and bits of scrap metal. Its even larger cousin was made from plastic bottles collected by pupils over the previous 3 weeks. For more images click here.
These workshops, which took place during the school's Activities Week, were followed up with Citizenship presentations for pupils to learn more about the problems associated with landfill sites.
Re-use - Nailsea School David Bowers, of Mosaic Madness, worked with pupils during their Activities Week to make beautiful mosaics from unwanted tiles. For more images click here. Citizenship sessions to develop pupils' awareness of waste issues followed the mosaicing workshops.
Recycle - Baytree School
Jane Byass of TRC spent three days making wonderful recycled paper with pupils. This was followed up with workshops tailored to pupils' needs, based on those developed for Primary pupils. For more information and images click here.

For further information, click below.