Recycle at school

All Plymouth schools are able to take part in the schools recycling scheme and help the city reduce the mountain of waste it is currently sending to landfill.

By taking part, schools will not only help to reduce their negative impact on the environment, but will save themselves money. Taking part will also help schools to educate students about sustainable development and citizenship issues.

Who can take part?

All schools and educational establishments, including private, grant maintained, local authority controlled schools and colleges in the city can take part in the schools recycling scheme.

How does the scheme work?

Schools that register on the scheme are supplied with as many 50-litre re-usable bags as they require. As a rule of thumb this should be one per classroom, office or any other room where recyclable rubbish is likely to be generated.

We will then exchange one or more of the school's bulk waste bins for large clearly labelled recycling bins. Because at least half of the waste generated by a school is recyclable, reducing the numbers of normal waste bins should not cause the school any problems.

The school caretaker, cleaning staff, or better still, pupils appointed as eco-warriors (recycling monitors), are then responsible for collecting the classroom bags when full of recyclables and taking to a central point ready for the caretaker or responsible person to transfer to the bulk bins.

We will empty the recycling bulk bins once a week. We will let schools know which day their recycling will be collected when they register (this may not be the same day as the normal waste collection), and schools need to make sure that bins are accessible to our collectors on their recycling collection day.

What does it cost?

Depending on the size of bins and the frequency of collection your school needs, the cost will vary slightly. Please contact us for further information.

Although the service is charged, schools that join the service will save themselves money on their existing disposal costs as the charge is only half of the cost of emptying and hiring a normal waste bin.

As a rough guide, each waste bin exchanged for a bulk recycling bin will save the school around £200 a year.

How can schools join the scheme?

Interested schools should contact us, and we will send details of how the scheme works and a registration form. Once the registration form has been returned to us, a time can be arranged to deliver the bags and recycling bins and to start collections.

Documents

To view these documents you might need to download some software. Visit our downloads page for more information.

	School recycling scheme - list of recyclable items to be included in the schools recycling scheme. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 551.3KB
	School recycling scheme form - registration form for schools recycling scheme. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 41.2KB

[Back to top]