Litter around the school

In this activity we will look at our school grounds and think about what we can do to keep them litter free.

Before this activity it is a good idea to decide why it is important for you, your school friends and teachers to have a school that is litter free. Write down these reasons.

Make a large poster and put this up alongside your good reasons. You may have seen some towns that are called tidy towns. Think about why it would be good to live in a tidy town. After you have listed the good things, then think about the behaviour and actions of the people who live in a tidy town. Write down how they keep the town tidy – including how they remove all types of litter from the streets.

Part 1

Write down all the things that are already being done at the school to clean up litter. We call this an 'audit'. Some ideas include finding out who is cleaning the yard, how many bins are around the school and what students are learning about in class.

Activity

Enlarge a map of the school grounds. Use a coloured text and, with the class, colour in the areas where you notice more litter than other places. Use another colour to mark in where the rubbish bins are placed around the school. Decide if there are certain times in the day that there is more litter than other times. You might decide that some of the bins should be moved or that there should be more bins in the school grounds.

Action plan

After this, your class can work on an action plan. How can we reduce the amount of litter in the school? Ideas:

• learning about why people drop litter in the first place and thinking about ways to teach them about the problems of littering to help change their behaviour
• more bins and where they are placed in case wind blows them over
• less packaging sold at the school canteen
• every class looking after an area in the school
• everyone cleaning for five minutes after lunch
• the school having gloves and tongs to use for picking up rubbish
• posters around the school
• photographs before and after
• recycling bins
• guest speakers
• learning more about the effects of littering on those around us such as animals and wildlife.

Your plan may take a few months to get going, but you should be able to see an improvement within days.

Write a report in your school newsletter and share your good work!

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