Pippa Hughes writes:
The litter generated by pupils attending your school [Orchards Primary School] has been an ongoing problem and the cause of considerable consternation for all the residents surrounding the school for a long time.
Plastic packets, chip and chocolate wrappers and the like are a daily occurrence and residents constantly have to clean up this litter, which every day finds its way onto their surrounding properties. It simply has to cease.
It seems strange that your school body either seems to not notice this, be unaware of this, or worse, simply does not care.
A school is part of its community, and as such has a duty of care for its surrounds. It also has a duty to educate, not only in an academic sense but in a broader societal context. It’s unimaginable that your school would not have an anti-littering or even a re-use, recycle educational element.
Might one suggest a few options to resolving this issue:
- At least once a month, in the Life Skills or youth preparedness class, have an anti-littering angle, engaging pupils with the notion of how important a clean environment is.
- Engage with a reputable recycling company such as Enviroserve or with a waste disposal entity such as Pikitup, and request that perhaps once a month a talk and demonstration is given regarding waste.
- A weekly or monthly outing around the outside perimeter where pupils use recycled black bags to pick up the litter they have strewn.
- An outing to a recycling plant would work wonders in impressing upon pupils what can be done when waste is recycled into something completely different and useful.
- A simple Google search on how littering affects rivers, communities and ocean life will reveal hundreds of visual examples that can be shown to pupils.
As residents, we are happy to assist in providing leads as to whom in the recycling industry to contact in this regard.
We are by no means suggesting that your pupils alone are responsible for every scrap of litter, but they certainly are a major contributor.
We would appreciate your serious engagement in this regard and look forward to a reply which would constructively help address the situation.
