STUDENTS at Droitwich Spa High School have been boosting their recycling efforts after they were asked to put forward their ideas on how to improve the school.

The school council were challenged with developing ways of making the school more environmentally friendly, and they felt that the way to making real improvements, was to ensure that everyone, from the headteacher to the new year eight students, should actively take part in the school’s recycling efforts.

As a result the school’s resources manager, Angie Savage, helped the student council select the right kind of recycling bins to go around the school, so that people could easily recycle paper, bottles, and cans.

The student council also took on extra advice from Wychavon District Council, Taylors Bins, Green Buying and the Carbon Trust to ensure they were doing as much as they could to increase recycling, before preparing a launch event earlier this term to show everyone the new facilities and why it was important for them to get on board with the project, introducing more initiatives such as a house competition for light switch stickers to encourage students to turn off lights they are not using.

The school received a grant of £750 from the Duckworth Worcestershire Trust School Environment Fund, which was used, with match funding from the school, to buy all of the new recycling bins needed for all of the classrooms, offices and public spaces in the school, with twice-weekly collections already failing to empty the bins before they can be filled up again.

Mrs Savage said: “The project has been a great success and has massively reduced the amount of waste we are sending to landfill. In order to keep the momentum going, we are now going to consider the amount of paper that is going for recycling and challenge ourselves to use less in the first place. It has been a project that everyone in the school has got behind and is actively engaged in. It is very encouraging that young people can so clearly see the benefits of wasting fewer resources.”