Last Thursday March 17th, we collaborated with the PLASTIC people. As you know, we have set up the recycle bins in our school to minimize our waste. We’ll send the recycled products to different organizations that can use the products to create new materials; one of which is the PLASTICpeople. Although we have the recycled bins, we always want to try and recycle as much as possible which is why we sorted out the waste from general waste as well.
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Waste audit workshop with Nestor and Nano
We started out by asking the cleaners to collect all the waste within the school and send them to the 5th floor gardening area. First, the PLASTICpeople gave us an introduction on what they wanted us to do as the ISHCMC community to help them, but also their goal and intended results which were to create a long term sustainable project, program and system in our school to continue recycling products and minimizing waste for the years to come.
Waste collection
The general waste bags were full of different kinds of things altogether such as food, leftover drinks and liquids, paper, plastic and many more which made the overall waste very dirty. However, the bags from the recycling bins were almost perfectly sorted out, clean and dry. Therefore we could immediately start preparing the materials from the recycling bins and as for the materials in the general waste bins, we still had to sort them out and it was dirty work.
General Waste Weighting and Sorting
Recycling Stations Waste Weighting and Sorting
During our experience, most of us found out that the way we were sorting out waste was time consuming and inefficient. Sorting out different types of waste from garbage that was mixed with all sorts of things made it very difficult for us, but also dirty materials damaged other materials and made them non-recyclable. The solution to this problem and the solution that the PLASTIC PEOPLE wanted to show us was that the problem starts at the source: first stage of waste sorting. The first stage is the stage where people start throwing waste into the recycled garbage bins. Many garbage bins contain a mix of everything, therefore if we sort out the materials from the start it would already help us twice as much. Instead of throwing dirty contaminated materials and food in the same bin as the paper and cardboard bin, you could separate them and keep the paper dry and clean. This was the main idea of this experience which is what our next big improvement will be for the Recycling Bins.
Collected Data on the day
Eco-school Committee
Romy, Shiho, Quynh, Pascal
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