Activity 11 – WASTING AWAY

You’ve heard a lot about how much we ought to recycle our waste unless we want Malta buried under a refuse mountain! But how much is happening in practice? This activity can mobilise an army of recyclers in your school. In Dinja Wahda 3 we had about 6700 children doing recycling. See if you can drum up a sizeable squad in your area... and a total of 250 points!!!

• Find a corner in your school that can serve as a collection bank. Divide it into clearly marked sections for the type of waste you intend to collect. Here are this year's categories - remember to collect them separately!
  1. Newspapers
  2. Aluminium cans
  3. Plastic bottles
  4. Used batteries
  5. White paper (remove plastic windows, covers, staples, etc)
  6. Coloured paper (magazines, charts, project books, etc)
  7. Printer cartridges

• Introduce the scheme (e.g. school assembly). Urge all classes to keep a decorated, labelled box for each type of waste. Get children to start throwing their waste materials in these boxes. Some categories you may wish to restrict to waste generated by the school alone, others you may extend to waste generated in the home - this is totally up to you! Make sure they see you using the boxes too!
  

• Put pupils in charge of emptying the class boxes into the recycling bank, and others to keep the boxes and bank in order.
  

• When the bank is almost full, call Sant’Antnin Recycling Plant (21636601-5 - ask for Mr John Micallef) for their excellent free collection service. They will collect items in categories A to F. For category G (printer cartridges) read on...
  

• For category G call Ecotrade! Ecotrade is a company which offers free collection of used printer cartridges (which they then refill and resell at a cheaper rate, an excellent recycling exercise). Urge the kids to get their empty computer ink cartridges from home, pile them all up and call Ecotrade to come and collect. Don’t forget to add the cartridges you use at school.
  

• Take photos of class boxes, the recycling bank and kids using both. Send them to BirdLife together with Feedback Form.
  

Points...

100 points = basic setup

25 points = for every separate category