From 2025, all schools are required to develop a climate action plan, and recycling and waste management should play a key role within that.
For your school’s climate action plan to have maximum effect, it is crucial that the changes you seek to make have buy-in from all stakeholders in the school community.
To help nurture positive behaviour change from staff, students, and parents, here are some ideas and examples that you could include in your action plans. We hope that your school will be able to take inspiration from these ideas and successfully facilitate circular practices within your school’s community.
Composting is a natural process that turns your garden waste and compostable food waste into soil improver for your garden. By composting, you can reduce the amount of organic waste that needs to be processed elsewhere.
When food is sent to landfill, it doesn’t just safely breakdown. Instead, it rots among plastic and other waste releasing harmful greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. Reducing the amount of food waste your school produces, and recycling what can’t avoided, is one of the most impactful things you can do to protect the environment. From 31 March 2025, schools will be required to collect food waste separately, but there are many strategies for dealing with and preventing food waste beyond the use of additional bins.
Litter picking is a great activity that can involve students and staff. By reducing visible waste around the school site, this will create a cleaner environment for the whole school community to be proud of.
Ensuring that clear and accessible recycling bins are adequately placed around your school will make it as easy as possible for everyone to recycle what they can. You might also want to look into recycling schemes for harder-to-recycle items that will reduce the amount of waste ending up in the general rubbish. By recycling more, you will help the environment and reduce your waste collection and disposal costs over time.
Promoting reuse and repair allows products and materials to be used many times instead of being thrown away. This can be done through maintenance and repair, opting to borrow, rent or buy second-hand.
Once your school has implemented recycling systems in classrooms, offices and communal spaces, share information on how everyone should use them. Use assemblies to inform the wider school community of upcoming service changes as well as the key benefits to recycling more and wasting less. Encouraging the wider school community in this way will help promote the social responsibility of waste management as a shared effort to which all can contribute.
To maintain student participation in adopting a recycling system effectively, you could also introduce competitions between classes or year groups. See which classroom can reduce their waste the most, or offer a reward to the class who actively recycle as much as they can.
In light of Simpler Recycling regulations being brought in place from 31 March 2025, use this time of change as the opportunity to engage students, parents, and staff to buy into a more comprehensive waste management system. If you'd like to know more about conducting a waste audit and setting up a waste strategy for your school, read through our waste management advice.
If you would like to read further and utilise existing resources for inspiring sustainable waste and recycling behaviours within your school, have a look through these for more guidance and inspiration:
If you would like to read further and utilise existing resources for inspiring sustainable waste and recycling behaviours within your school, have a look through these for more guidance and inspiration: