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(Girl student 1): As Robertson is a green high school, the eco kids are working to make our school a better place
where we look after the environment.
We wanted to do something to reduce waste and we needed to find out what type of rubbish we were reducing
to see if there were ways we could reuse some of the rubbish by recycling or composting.
A waste audit is a process of identifying the types of waste your school is producing and the actual amounts.
The waste audit helped us become more waste wise because we could identify
what was really going on and then plan to fix it.
You will need to do at least 3 waste audits and use measurements to find average.
We chose to do the same bins and the same lunch area on 3 different days.
We created a table to record our findings for each of the 3 waste audits.
Sorting waste is not as bad as you may think.
Safety comes first and your tools are important.
To do the audit, you’ll need a tarp, gloves, tongs and an electric scale.
The scale is for measuring how much waste there is.
(Girl student 2): In the beginning, we thought the most common type of waste would be recycled products like plastic.
But after we had done the 3 audits, we found it was actually food scraps.
Our next step was to ask the school for money to buy the compost bins and a wheelie bin to collect scraps in.
We were also lucky to have one compost bin donated to the school.
We spoke at assembly about what could be put into the compost and what could not be put into the compost.
We made posters to stick on the notice board and on a small wheelie bin,
which we used to collect the food scraps for the compost.
The posters show pictures of what can and can’t be put into the compost.
We made a roster of people who would take the wheelie bin to the correct area each day,
then empty the contents into the compost bin.
We are hoping to have similar wheelie bins in all eating areas by the end of the year.
We are also looking forward to being able to use the compost we produce onto our gardens
so that the trees and plants grow and produce, and bush tucker and also attract native birds and animals.
The waste audit helped us to learn that it is easy to reduce our general waste,
which would normally be going into landfill sites.
It has also showed us that there are a lot of students who were wasting a lot of good food.
We learned that it is important to find out what rubbish we produced before deciding what to do about it.
We hope that you will reduce your waste now that you know how to conduct a waste audit.
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