For schools
Classroom waste audit
Students collect and sort one day of their classroom’s waste, find out what it’s made of, and choose what to change.
Ages 10–14About 45 minutes
What you need
- Gloves for everyone handling waste
- Three boxes or bags labelled Wet, Dry and Reject
- A kitchen scale (optional)
- Chart paper and markers
Step by step
Before the day
Ask the class to put all their waste for one day into a single bag kept in the classroom, instead of the usual bin.
The activity
- Put on gloves and empty the bag on a sheet of newspaper.
- Sort everything into three piles: wet (food, peels), dry (paper, plastic, metal, glass) and reject (things that can’t be recycled, like chip packets).
- Count or weigh each pile and write the numbers on the chart.
- Look at the dry pile together: what could we have refused, reused or recycled?
- Agree on two changes as a class, for example steel bottles and a paper-only bin.
After a month
Repeat the audit and compare the numbers. Put both charts up on the notice board.
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