I’m (still just about) a governor at a small school in Scarisbrick, and director of a small company in Wigan. Both have recycling issues, the school more serious than ourselves.

The school has a roll in the 20s, and operates recesption to Juniors in 2 small classes. As the school is not residential, they don’t pay the council tax required to be included in the District Council’s refuse collection, which includes blue box, paper, plastic, cardboard, glass & textile recycling (it’s really quite good, and the council claim none of it goes to landfill – I make as much use of it as I can at home). So they have to operate as a commercial organisation. Their current refuse contractor just plain doesn’t “do”recycling, so they are looking for alternatives, however, they haven’t had much luck so far. I’m guessing they’ll come across the same problem we do at work (outlined below) which is that they’ll have to pay for some ridiculously large volume of recycling collection when they only produce a little of each kind. This ends up making it financially unviable – did I mention they only have 20+ children on roll, with 6 or so full time staff? Even the paper produced wouldn’t make it worthwhile to pay for weekly wheelie bin collections.

As well as the basic issue of how does the school dispose of its waste responsibly & in an environmentally friendly manner, they also want to be encouraging the children into good habits. If the children know that the paper they put in the “recycling” box is just put in the general waste, they won’t do it, will they? A creative alternative would be to get the children to take it in turns to take a bag of recycling home with them each week to include in their household’s kerbside collection, but that’s probably illegal or Against Council Policy, besides the obvious problem of asking children to essentially take rubbish home as well as homework.

And so to work. I’ve been recycling office paper since I started work in 1993. It feels wrong to put paper in the bin, in the same way as it feels wrong to put organic waste in my normal bin at home. Because it’s only me saving my office paper (and to be fair, I do the most paperwork – they boys are mainly doing the chargeable stuff which generates broken motherboards & the like – a whole different waste disposal issue!) I generate a 5-ream box of paper about every 3 months. However, the lowest level of waste collection our refuse collection company can provide is a wheelie bin which would be collected every week (or possibly every other week) charged at much the same rate as our main refuse collection, which is just over £90/6 months. I don’t have a problem taking the boxes to the council tip, given that they aren’t big or heavy, however, I either take them whole, thus possibly creating a confidentiality problem in these paranoid times, or I shred them in which case I have to put them in the general waste otherwise the tip turns into a snowstorm of shredded paper & the whole recycling thing goes down the pan.

I’m now looking into mobile shredding services, as I passed such a van parked on our street the other day. I’m now kicking myself that I didn’t make a note of who they were or their contact details…