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 hazardous or other specialist waste your educational setting may produce. Hazardous wastes, such as used batteries or chemicals, must be collected and disposed of responsibly. Other types of waste, such as furniture, storage cupboards or stationery, can be reused by donating them to charities or by using a reuse and sharing platform such as WARPIT, where reusable items can be donated and claimed by its members.
Best practice case study
University College London (UCL) uses the WARPIT reuse and sharing platform to trade items for reuse within its own departments and across a wider WARPIT network of 15 very large public sector organisations using the system in London.
In two years, they’ve made savings in excess of £100,000 and avoided 26 tonnes of supply chain emissions. A high proportion of trades are lab equipment, with many items being shared between the universities and third sector members each month. The estimated time it takes the university to manage this system is just half an hour a month, making it easy to manage as well as effective.
Read more about UCL’s experience of using WARPIT here.
There’s plenty of information already out there to help you manage other types of waste:
- Sustainability Exchange – 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 types as well as those included in this guide.
- The Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework – LEAF, developed by University College London (UCL), contains actions 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 for garden and food waste
- The Children’s Scrapstore – started in Bristol, but there are now branches across the UK – search Google to find your nearest one. They provide scrap and craft materials for children’s play and creativity, and also accept donations of clean scrap materials such as paper.
- UniGreenScheme - The Asset Resale Service for Universities – 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.
- The WARPIT reuse and sharing platform – this 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.
- RAMCO Surplus Sorted – disposal of surplus goods by giving new life to old assets
- The Chartered Institute of Waste Management has handy tools and resources specifically for Waste Managers and anyone else responsible for managing waste. Other training providers, such as EcoVardis Academy and The Carbon Literacy Project, provide training in wider sustainability.