Moving towards Nude Food

You might have heard that the yellow mixed recycling bins at BNWPS are gone. This is due to contamination that we have noticed through conducting weekly bin audits.

Contamination is when things that don’t belong in the mixed recycling are in there. Often these things contain food, soft plastics and mixed materials like juice boxes. This means that whole bin is then contaminated, then, if the truck that collects it has a high percentage of contamination the entire truck must turn around and go to landfill! In Enviro Science we just found out that only about 13% of recyclable materials actually get recycled in Victoria.

At school we have been using new awards to promote wearing hats in summer, looking after our class’s compost and now the Golden Apple is for putting the right things in the right bins. With the Golden Apple the senior students survey each class’s bins and give them a score out of five! Classes need to get the most points to win the Golden Apple each week but if the surveyors find recyclables that should have been taken home, points will be deducted.

So it would be great if you could bring nude food but even if you can’t, for whatever reason, please take your mixed recyclables home (we have a paper bin so don’t worry about that).  

By Ella Hendy and Hillary Shortridge on behalf of the senior school and Enviro Leaders.