Currently touring secondary schools in Derbyshire. Waste Watchers follows the story of 3 Yr 8 pupils all with differing knowledge, attitude and opinions about environmental issues.
Tasked with an ‘environmental competition thingy for Mrs Moody’ they discover the importance of the 3R’s and consider what actions they can take to reduce reuse and recycle their waste to help protect the environment for themselves and for future generations. Also featuring: Billy Big, Cheryl Cole, Louie Spence, Louie Walsh, and Kelly Rowlands.... or is it?!!
/ The Waste Watchers Grant 2012/ Website Features
/ Why Recycle?
/ Top Tips - reducing your rubbish
/ How to recycle
/ Fun & Games
/ Useful Links
/ Competition Winners 2011
Waste Watchers challenges the audience to become more environmentally aware and consider how the actions that they can take to reduce or reuse waste and recycle more will impact positively upon their school, homes and community in which they live.
Want to run a waste minimisation or recycling project in school and need some funds?
Looking to start a Citizenship project on waste
Want to buy more recycling bins for school?
The Waste Watchers have a fund of £1500 available for school projects or campaigns tackling waste and recycling. Money could be spent on setting up a swap shop, running a recycled fashion show, purchasing recycling bins or any other creative ideas for raising awareness of waste minimisation and recycling in your school. The small print
To apply: Send a plan of your project in under 500 words stating:
What you intend to do
How much money you need
What impact you feel this would make to your school
Deadline: 12th May 2012
Send to: Alex McDonald, Eco-Schools Officer, Derbyshire County Council, Shand House, Darley Dale, Derbyshire, DE4 3RY or email alexandra.mcdonald@derbyshire.gov.uk
Recycling is a great way to gain more value from materials. Until recent years, a very large proportion of items such as cans, bottles, jars and paper were thrown in our black rubbish bins and put into landfill sites. Now, there are many ways we can easily recycle such materials in Derbyshire.
Economic benefits of recycling
Recycling is a chance to turn old items back into new ones. This reduces the need to extract raw materials and saves resources such as oil, trees and metal ores. As resources are used they become more scarce, this means they become more expensive, by recycling materials the cost increases can be reduced.
Environmental benefits of recycling
A recurring theme in the debate that surrounds waste is the extent to which the recycling of materials does actually benefit the environment. It has been suggested that more energy might be used in getting the materials to a recycling plant and processing them than is saved during the recycling process. The government asked the Waste Resources and Action Programme (WRAP) to study the issues in detail. The report in full is available here
/ Recycling 2 glass bottles...
will save enough energy to boil water for 5 cups of tea.
/ Recycling 1 bottle...
will save enough electricity to run your Wii for 5 hours.
/ The energy saved by recycling one aluminium can...
will power your TV for 3 hours.
/ Recycling one plastic bottle...
will save enough energy to power a 60 watt bulb for 6 hours.
/ Recycling 1 tonne of paper...
can save over 10,000 litres of water, 3,500 kilowatts of electricity and also cut air pollution by 90%.
Reduce, reuse, recycle - what we can do
We know that the best environmental solution is to Reduce your rubbish – Waste Reduction. If you can’t avoid creating the rubbish the next best solution is to think of ways of reusing the materials – Waste Reuse. If you can’t reduce or reuse materials then recycle them - Waste Recycling
Smart shopping
We can buy too much when we go shopping, research shows that 1/5 of all food bought in the UK ends up being thrown away.
read it for yourself here On average we throw away up to £50 of food waste per household each month.
Junk Mail
On average each household receives 220 items of junk mail each year. You can register with the Mailing Preference Service to cut this down.
.gif)
Reusing materials
Reusing materials can save money and help protect the environment. Here are some ideas to help:
/ Give things to charity: Recycle your clothes, books and unwanted gifts at charity shops, clothes banks or via charity bags at your doorstep. Some charity shops also accept items such as stamps, coins, mobile phones and cartridges. You can find a list of your local charity shops here:
/ Liquid refreshment: When exercising reuse a cool drinks bottle rather than buying new ones.
/ Book clubs: Start a book club with friends. Sharing books saves resources and money.
What else could you share this way? Give unwanted things a new home: Online networks can help you find the person who will think your rubbish might be their riches for everything from CDs to furniture.
Old phones
Recycle your old mobile phone - many supermarkets, charity shops and mobile phone retailers offer recycling services and this raises money for a good cause; For example take a look at Oxfam
You could also do it to raise money for your school: 
Composting
Composting is one of the very best things we can do. It reduces greenhouse gas pollution and means there is less waste filling up landfills. Garden waste, raw fruit, vegetables, tea bags, paper, cardboard and many other types of rubbish in order to make good quality compost. Try
School swap shop
Think about swapping things at school or have a 'swap shop day'. Exchange older goods that might otherwise have been thrown out. There is even a website that allows staff from schools to exchange goods with other schools and parents.
There are now more and easier ways for you to recycle your wastes in Derbyshire including: Using your doorstep recycling service; Use of your local recycling sites; Use of Derbyshire’s 9 Household Waste Recycling Centres. Find out more:
Small actions, big benefits
Through recycling, you really can make a real difference. As more people recycle, the difference adds up to be really significant. In addition, there are loads of great examples on the web of old things being used to make new things, Have a look at a few of these Waste Watcher favourites:
/ Recycled fleece jumpers (made from plastic bottles):
/ Recycled bags (made from many different materials):
/ Recycled glasses and beakers
There are plenty of fun recycling activities and games online.
Test your skill and learn more – try these:
Congratulations to last year’s competition winners Netherthorpe School and William Allitt school.
Netherthorpe School received £1000 to buy more recycling bins to be placed around the school for their ’ bag a bargain ‘idea which turned old unwanted items into cash for their ‘eco fund’ .
And William Allitt received £500 to spend on recycling benches for their efforts on becoming a more eco friendly school including a new project on growing their own fruit and producing jam to sell as an enterprise venture
/ Waste Watchers Grant - The small print!
The Grant is open to secondary schools in Derbyshire who have hosted The Waste Watchers in 2012. The maximum any one school can ask for is £1000. Applications will be assesd on their own merit and we will endeavour to fund as many as possible giving preference to those that are deemed to have the highest ipmact or raise awareness amongst as many people as possible for that school.