In the beginning of 2020 I decided to start making some changes to eliminate more plastic at work. I am a primary school teacher and I have seen a lot of waste happen over the years. There were some things I was already doing but I feel that in the last two months I have taken more steps to make our class as environmentally friendly as possible. It has had a very good impact with the children, they love getting involved and like to be pioneers of plastic free classroom solutions for the rest of the school. Earlier this term, we had a chat about what we are doing well and what we could do better, which motivated us to try some new routines.
Here is a list of what we have achieved so far.
Whiteboard Crayons
Over the years, I have seen so much waste due to whiteboard markers. They dry to quickly, they get over-used because they're fun to wipe off, they are left with lids off and children often pretended to lose them for an excuse to get a new one. I decided to look into alternatives that would not produce as much waste. Enter: the whiteboard crayon! These are unfortunately only produced in the USA so I've had to get them shipped over. They have many advantages over the markers:
- They never dry out;
- If they break they can still be used;
- They are packaged in a cardboard box;
- When they run out, there is nothing left. Literally;
- They're slightly more hard work to wipe so children tend to not over use them;
- They last a very long time.
I've been using these in my classroom for a whole term successfully with no problems. The only disadvantages are:
- If they are stepped on they can crumble;
- They are slightly tougher to wipe off but completely manageable.
Whiteboard rubbers
There can't be whiteboard markers without whiteboard rubbers. As we are using the crayons, we needed some dry cloths for wiping as the plastic sponge-like rubbers the school provides don't work with the crayons (and are also very bad for the environment). One afternoon, I cut up lots of old T-shirts and sewed them into whiteboard rubbers to bring to school. They have a gap on the inside for the children to put their hand in and wipe so they don't get their hands dirty. This makes them also fit perfectly over our pencil pots. We wash them once every six weeks and they work really well.
Glue
This is another massive source of plastic waste. Glue sticks often get left without lid and they dry out or they are over-used and run out really quickly. I have tried out Coccoina, a glue paste made out of potato starch that is completely non toxic and safe. This glue comes in a metal tin with a tiny brush used to apply it. However, this glue is not very cheap (£4.50 per pot) and I had trouble getting it approved by the school as it is a substance. I then decided to use what was already available to me and very cheap: PVA glue. The school has a huge stock of 5L containers of PVA glue so it seemed pointless to go through the effort of sourcing some really expensive glue alternative. I decided to reuse some plastic pots (the ones that elastic bands and paper clips come in) to keep the glue from drying and placed one on each table. It took a while to collect enough unused pots from other classes but now we have a system that works and the children are very mindful to not use too much to not make their books too wet. It means we need to leave our books open for a while to dry out but it was a very small change in routine and the amount of glue we go through has decreased massively.
Pencils
This year I decided to stop giving out new pencils until I had run out of all the half used ones I had left over from the year before. It took about a term to get through all of them. After that, I requested some new pencils and noticed how quickly I was being asked for new pencils. After some investigation I understood the causes of this:
- over sharpening;
- pencils being lost under furniture or inside radiators;
- smaller pencils getting lost in the pencil pots amongst other stuff and children not really looking properly for them before coming to me for a new pencil.
I decided to make some changes to limit the pencil wastage and involved the children in the decision. This is what I came up with:
- removing sharpeners from each table and only having one sharpener by the bin which children need to ask permission to use;
- each child was given a new pencil with their name on it to look after and try to make it last until the end of the school year;
- pencil pots monitors to check that writing pencils were placed in a separate compartment of the pencil pots at the end of each day.
There are still some pencils going missing but overall we have reduced our wastage by being more mindful of how we use them.
No Laminating
Something that has come to my attention recently is the amount of waste from laminating. When I started teaching, I used to laminate resources just to make them look prettier and more durable but they would eventually be damaged anyways. Also, for each A4 paper that is laminated there is a huge amount of waste cut offs as the laminated is done in big rolls and, needless to say, none of it is recyclable or biodegradable.
I have got this amazing idea from https://zerowasteclassroom.org/ and I started backing resources onto old cereal boxes that the children bring in from home. They actually fare better in outdoor areas with poor weather conditions than laminated materials as well! I have been very happy with this solution as it involves using repurposed materials instead of plastic.
To be continued:
Look out for part two which will include:
- arts & crafts
- Kids Fight Plastic missions