This guide is for the person responsible for managing waste at your educational setting, site or workplace. If you’re a large education organisation with multiple sites, you may have a dedicated Waste Manager. If you’re a smaller organisation, this may be the responsibility of the business owner or site manager.
This guide only deals with non-hazardous municipal waste – the sorts of waste materials also produced in the home. We won’t be covering how to manage or other specialist waste your organisation may produce.
Good to know:
There’s plenty of information already out there to help you manage other waste streams commonly produced by educational establishments:
Sustainability Exchange is delivered by EAUC as a resource for sustainability in education and provides a
Waste Guide which includes advice and resources to help you manage a range of other waste streams as well as those included in this guidance.
The Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework - LEAF, developed by University College London (UCL) contains actions which lab users can take to save plastics, water, energy, and other resources.
The RHS Campaign for School Gardening provides advice and resources to help your school set up on-site composting of garden and food waste.
The Children’s Scrapstore started in Bristol but there are now Children’s Scrapstores across the UK. NI’s Scrapstore is Play Resource. They provide scrap and craft materials for children’s play and creativity they also accept donations of clean scrap materials such as paper.
UniGreenScheme - The Asset Resale Service for Universities is a free service that helps you recoup valuable space, generate revenue and hit your environmental targets by collecting, storing and selling your unused or surplus high-value laboratory equipment.
Northern Ireland Business Information has lots of useful information on office resource efficiency and how to cut your office waste, along with links to useful sites and waste management companies.
The WARPIT reuse and sharing platform can be used to trade items for reuse within your organisation’s departments and across a wider WARPIT network of public sector organisations who are also WARPIT users.
The Eco-Schools programme (Keep NI Beautiful) provides the opportunity to foster environmental awareness while linking to many curriculum subjects. Eco-Schools aims to educate and empower young people to make positive decisions and become change makers for an environmentally sustainable world. Providing Resources for teachers to use on their Eco-Schools journey, to extend learning beyond the classroom and developing responsible attitudes and commitment, both at home and in the wider community. Its participatory approach and combination of learning and action make it an ideal way for schools to improve their environment and local communities while influencing the lives of young people, staff and families.
Belfast City Council runs a range of recycling events and workshops to help school, community group or business’s reach recycling goals. All events and workshops are free and more information is available here Recycling workshops.