Meet Our Group
This is us, subject: Rubbish in the school.
Sabien•Name: Sabien
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Gerben
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Agnes•Name: Agnes
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Lara |
Robin |
•Name: Lara
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•Name: Robin
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Reducing Rubbish Produced in our School
These days, a lot of rubbish is produced, especially in schools. In this report, we would like to bring you, dear reader, our research we have done to see if this was a problem at our school, and how we could fix this.
Our School Our school, Nehalennia SSG, is located in the city of Middelburg in the Netherlands. It consists of two buildings, one for the higher-level education and one for the lower-level education. There's also a separate part for the first-year pupils in the building for the higher levels of education. The building has a central hall with a canteen, which sells sandwiches during the breaks, multiple computer classrooms, a library, a few art classrooms, a music classroom and of course lots of normal classrooms. There are about a thousand pupils at our school. Rubbish Produced and What Happens to It So then, how much rubbish is produced? For this, we have interviewed one of our janitors at our school. He answered all of the questions we had about our garbage, including what happens to it. We found out that all garbage is collected inside garbage bins in the school, and then emptied into larger ones inside the school. Eventually then all garbage goes in a container like the one on the right, and fills up in two days. It is emptied by a company called Van Gansewinkel twice a week. The container is about 3 metres deep and can contain about 5000 litres of rubbish. We also did a questionnaire to about 30 pupils to see who produced the most rubbish on our school, and what rubbish they produce the most. It turns out they think boys produce the most rubbish and that the upper and lower classes produce about the same amount of rubbish, but the upper classes leave the most rubbish on the ground. A bad thing though is that most of the pupils do nothing if they see one of their fellow mates throwing something on the ground. Sometimes pupils do leave something on the ground, and when asked, most of them say they don't feel like throwing it away. Most of the rubbish produced is food. This is of course more in the big halls than in the classrooms, where you will mostly find paper. Also, a lot of soda cans are thrown away. |
Our school from the outside (top) and from the inside (bottom).
The trash bin outside and the rubbish produced in two days.
Our garbage bins, that are used all around the school.
The questionnaire we gave to about 30 first years.
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School Policy
We have also asked one of the janitors at our school about the school's policy concerning rubbish, and we have ourselves looked at how the school treats it.
At our school, we use a lot of recycled paper already, in the toilets as toilet paper and test papers are made of recycled paper. We also try to use our paper again a lot, most of the time in art projects. We have also special bins for paper in a lot of classrooms, but not a lot of people use those. Glass is too, separated from the rest and put in special bins.
Students are also very much involved in rubbish cleaning, and collecting the rubbish. It is even in the statute of students that polluting the school is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. This means that you're expected to throw not only your rubbish in the bin, but also the rubbish you see lying on the ground, to keep the school a clean place. If students repeatedly do not comply with these rules, they are punished and are given a certain task to perform in their leisure time. This can mean sweeping our halls, or collecting the rubbish in the breaks.
ICT-Technology
One thing we've also researched is that if the use of ICT-Technology has reduced the amount of rubbish produced. Now we couldn't really do long-term research on this, as we can't find a situation where none is used, but we have personal experiences. First off, in our opinion the use of technology hasn't really reduced the amount of rubbish produced, as we still have to print out a lot of reports we have to write, especially for our EIO portfolios, where we should put all of our reports in one folder. However, we do find that we write way smaller when we type, than when we actually write text with a pen on paper. So, it might save a bit of paper, but not as much as you would expect.
Comparison with The Indian School, Hiranandani Foundation School
Now, as we've done the video conferences, and we have communicated in the WhatsApp group with the Indian counterpart of this group, we can compare our schools, on the subject of waste management. Our schools actually have a lot in common, as both schools have a general problem with the waste from the cafeteria in the school, as that produces the most waste. Their school however, doesn't have a problem with the tin cans, as we have. Plus, their school teaches kids from a young age to reduce, reuse and recycle waste. This doesn't happen at Nehalennia.
Our Solutions
We have, using this research, thought of a couple of solutions to reduce the amount of rubbish, and now we will give an advice towards the school on how to do just that. First off, discipline could be a solution. If all teachers would work together to only take reports and assignments in via e-mail, thus less paper would be used and less rubbish would be produced. We will try to implement this in the following weeks, and if we have any results we are maybe going to update this page to see if it has helped a lot.
Secondly, we thought of a return system for cans used for soda. This would involve giving all students who return their cans at a special returning point, they could get a small amount of money back, like 5 cents. Then these cans could be used in other art projects, or projects done by the people from the technical classes. Because soda cans are a big part of our rubbish, this would reduce it by a lot.
Conclusion
Now, to sum this all up. We have done a lot of research to see how we could reduce the amount of rubbish produced at our schools. We found out that a lot of rubbish produced are food and cans, and that there is still a lot of paper used despite the use of computers. We would advise the school one of our solutions, either to limit the use of the printers at school or the can-returning system we have talked about in the previous paragraph.
We have also asked one of the janitors at our school about the school's policy concerning rubbish, and we have ourselves looked at how the school treats it.
At our school, we use a lot of recycled paper already, in the toilets as toilet paper and test papers are made of recycled paper. We also try to use our paper again a lot, most of the time in art projects. We have also special bins for paper in a lot of classrooms, but not a lot of people use those. Glass is too, separated from the rest and put in special bins.
Students are also very much involved in rubbish cleaning, and collecting the rubbish. It is even in the statute of students that polluting the school is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. This means that you're expected to throw not only your rubbish in the bin, but also the rubbish you see lying on the ground, to keep the school a clean place. If students repeatedly do not comply with these rules, they are punished and are given a certain task to perform in their leisure time. This can mean sweeping our halls, or collecting the rubbish in the breaks.
ICT-Technology
One thing we've also researched is that if the use of ICT-Technology has reduced the amount of rubbish produced. Now we couldn't really do long-term research on this, as we can't find a situation where none is used, but we have personal experiences. First off, in our opinion the use of technology hasn't really reduced the amount of rubbish produced, as we still have to print out a lot of reports we have to write, especially for our EIO portfolios, where we should put all of our reports in one folder. However, we do find that we write way smaller when we type, than when we actually write text with a pen on paper. So, it might save a bit of paper, but not as much as you would expect.
Comparison with The Indian School, Hiranandani Foundation School
Now, as we've done the video conferences, and we have communicated in the WhatsApp group with the Indian counterpart of this group, we can compare our schools, on the subject of waste management. Our schools actually have a lot in common, as both schools have a general problem with the waste from the cafeteria in the school, as that produces the most waste. Their school however, doesn't have a problem with the tin cans, as we have. Plus, their school teaches kids from a young age to reduce, reuse and recycle waste. This doesn't happen at Nehalennia.
Our Solutions
We have, using this research, thought of a couple of solutions to reduce the amount of rubbish, and now we will give an advice towards the school on how to do just that. First off, discipline could be a solution. If all teachers would work together to only take reports and assignments in via e-mail, thus less paper would be used and less rubbish would be produced. We will try to implement this in the following weeks, and if we have any results we are maybe going to update this page to see if it has helped a lot.
Secondly, we thought of a return system for cans used for soda. This would involve giving all students who return their cans at a special returning point, they could get a small amount of money back, like 5 cents. Then these cans could be used in other art projects, or projects done by the people from the technical classes. Because soda cans are a big part of our rubbish, this would reduce it by a lot.
Conclusion
Now, to sum this all up. We have done a lot of research to see how we could reduce the amount of rubbish produced at our schools. We found out that a lot of rubbish produced are food and cans, and that there is still a lot of paper used despite the use of computers. We would advise the school one of our solutions, either to limit the use of the printers at school or the can-returning system we have talked about in the previous paragraph.
Reflection to this Project
Time, to reflect. Time, to look back on this project and see how we did. We think that if we would do this project again, there would be a lot that we would do differently. First off, we would begin a lot earlier than what we did now, as we had a lot of stress at the last moments to get everything together. We would also prepare better for the video conferences, as now we went in to those pretty much unprepared. What went well though is that we worked together really well. We all did our part and when we started, it went really well. We were a pretty much like a smooth machine. We all did our part and did about the same work. We all would love to be able to do something like this again, as it was a really great experience, to work together with the Indian students to find a solution to a common problem.
Communication with the Indian School
During the project, the main source of communication we used, were the two video conferences we have had so far. In the first one, we met the members of the group we would be cooperating with in the school in India. In the second one we discussed what we had found out so far (research), but sadly at that moment the group we were cooperating with, didn’t do much more yet than setting up a plan of action. In between the two video conferences, we used a group app to communicate with the pupils in India so we could compare our information every once in a while, and so we could ask them questions, and the other way around, if needed. Unfortunately, working with this group app didn’t work very well. We tried making use of it and took the different time zones we live in into a count, but even so the Indian pupils often didn’t respond to our questions. For example, we asked them a question and they only responded two days before we had to hand in the project. According to our group, it would be a good idea to plan maybe one or even two more video conferences over the course of the project next to the ones that are already planned. However, we of course do understand that this is quite difficult to arrange because of the different time zones and lessons that can’t be skipped all the time the first two hours or for the Indian pupils later in the day.
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