Communicating with your staff and students in the education sector

Internal communication is an important part of making recycling a success in your educational setting. If you completed a waste action plan in Step 2, you’ll find this a useful starting point when it comes to communicating your recycling plans with staff, students and visitors.

It will help you to begin by being clear about:

• Why your educational setting needs to recycle – go back to Step 1 for all the great reasons, including the legislation requiring it.

• Who manages waste within your educational setting? – for example, who empties the bins? Name individual employees, cleaners and facilities staff.

• The location and type of recycling bins and storage facilities – the first section of this step will help with this.

• Which external providers manage the waste and recycling collections – and when and how often do collections take place?

• How should items be presented for recycling? – for example, clean, dry and loose.

Setting your recycling communication aims and objectives

Setting communication aims and objectives will help focus your communications on supporting your wider recycling objectives, as well as enabling you to monitor whether they’ve been achieved. Your objectives could be as follows:

• Raise awareness of recycling opportunities in your educational setting

• Inform staff, students and visitors of your recycling and waste policy, your legal obligations and what they need to do to support this

• Make it clear how your organisation manages its waste, the benefits of recycling and why you want your staff, students and visitors to recycle

• Educate, inform and motivate staff, students and visitors – provide instructions and practical support on how to recycle in your educational setting and for those working remotely

• Change behaviour – all staff, students and visitors choose to recycle, making recycling the norm

An example of an aim and objective might be:

Aim: To encourage staff, students and visitors to start or improve recycling within the organisation

Objective: To raise awareness of what can be recycled across the organisation by installing recycling bins, signage and promotional posters in bin areas by the 31 March 2025.

Planning who you need to tell

It’s essential to communicate your plans effectively to all your staff, students and visitors, including those on-site and working remotely, to help them understand how, why, when and where to recycle.

Think about the different types of stakeholders – students, visitors, full-time, part-time, temporary or seasonal staff – and the different roles within your organisation and across your setting:

• Students

• Educators/teachers

• Senior management

• Managers

• Team leaders

• Technicians

• Facilities staff/cleaners

• Recycling service providers

• Office staff

• Remote workers

Assigning a named employee to take responsibility for communicating your recycling plan with staff and students will help make sure everyone is kept informed and doing their bit. Remember that recycling requirements will differ depending on a person’s role in the organisation; for example, students and teaching staff may be more likely to recycle office paper and food waste, whereas catering and canteen staff may focus on recycling cardboard, plastic and metal food packaging and food waste.

For larger educational settings, you may wish to send recycling messages to Department Heads/team leaders to cascade down to individual staff and student representatives. For example, senior staff members will need to brief managers about enforcing your waste and recycling policy, and managers may then need to liaise with waste service providers and directly with the facilities staff/cleaners responsible for sorting and managing waste for collection. Team leaders will need to ensure their staff members follow the recycling policy and reinforce what can be recycled, how and where.

Creating effective communications

Using consistent and complementary messaging across different communication touch points across your educational setting – from education emails to signage at recycling points – can help encourage people to recycle and change their behaviour.

Using branding to give your recycling communications a consistent look and feel will:

• Provide a recognisable identity for your recycling information

• Make the messages more recognisable and memorable

• Help build credibility and trust

Creating communication touch points across high-traffic areas across your educational setting helps staff and students to understand what they can and can’t recycle. To help with this, we’ve created a tried and tested ‘Business of Recycling’ identity that you can use to show your support and commitment to recycling. This, combined with the existing national Recycle Now logo, helps reinforce recycling messages both at home and at school/college /university.

Download these FREE communications resources to get started. They’re designed for you to print and include:

• Letterhead/header - to help you promote recycling in across your educational setting, highlight successes and reinforce the actions you want staff and students to take

• Email footer – a regular recycling reminder to staff and students and external audiences

• Instructional posters– in A3, A4 and A5, to show what can and can’t be recycled for each type of waste; these can also double up as bin stickers to ensure materials are collected correctly

• Short animations – to help staff and students understand more about the recycling process

Good to know

There are lots of useful resources for students:

• Seneca Learning provides revision notes for GCSE Design and Technology – The Six Rs.

• The Royal Horticultural Society’s RHS Campaign for School Gardening – Composting for Schools provides resources for younger students to set up composting at school.

• Recycle Now and Eco-Schools provide resources for Key Stages 1 and 2, including assemblies and lesson plans.

• ALUPRO, the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Association, has developed a range of free education resources for Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 students, which are available on their Learning Aluminium Hub. The resources focus on sustainability and recyclable materials, not just aluminium.

• BBC Future provides information on How recycling can help the climate and other facts.

• BBC BITESIZE provides content on waste and waste management for Key Stage 3 students.

Monitoring the impact of your communications

Once you’ve begun your recycling communications, remember to review them regularly to see how much of an impact they’ve had and spot where there may be room for improvement. Note successes so that you can share them with your staff and students to encourage them; success could be specific actions taken to achieve objectives or consistent, credible presentation of meaningful results.

Above all, identify activities that worked well and those that didn’t, and share learning from this. Review the findings, and then list your key recommendations for future communications.