Workplace recycling guide

Education

Help for your business at each step of the journey.

Guidance for the education sector

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Welcome to our Recycling Guide for the Education sector! ​     ​ 

In this guide, we’ll take you through five steps to implementing recycling in your workplace, and below is an outline of what we’ll be explaining. Whether you're a nursery, a school, a college or university or any other type of educational setting, if your workplace is new to recycling, work your way through from Step 1. If you’re after advice on a particular stage, click on the links below to jump to the relevant section.  The tips in this step-by-step guide will help you to: 

Optimise: get the most from your current waste collection service   

Plan: design a recycling system that works for your organisation and employees   

Reduce costs: recycling is often cheaper than disposal!   

Get compliant: ensure your workplace complies with the new regulations   

Content overview

About our Education sector Recycling Guide

There’s plenty of information and guidance out there for the education sector to help you manage other types of waste.

Step 1

Why your educational establishment needs to recycle

New regulations will soon require your workplace or educational setting to separate from your non-recyclable/general waste. In this guide, we’ll explain what to do to prepare. You have until 31 March 2025 if you have ten or more full-time equivalent employees, or until 31 March 2027 deadline for fewer than ten.

Step 2

Planning your educational establishments recycling needs

If you’re completely new to workplace recycling, this step will help you work out what waste your educational setting generates and what you might need from a recycling service.

Step 3

Calculating the collection cost of your establishments waste

If you’ve completed the waste audit as covered in Step 2, you’ll have collected detailed information about the amount and type of waste your setting produces. You can now use the business waste calculator to estimate the amount of waste collected from your educational setting and receive suggested changes that could help you recycle more and save money.

Step 4

Setting up recycling for your educational establishment

If you’ve carried out a waste audit and used the business waste calculator, you should now have a better understanding of the types of waste your educational setting generates and options to recycle more. You’ve hopefully also created a waste action plan, and now it’s time to put it into action!

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Step 5

Monitoring recycling services in educational establishments

Once you have your recycling set up and you’ve got your staff and students on board, it’s worth regularly monitoring and reviewing how it’s going. By doing so, you can share successes with your staff, students and visitors and look out for opportunities to improve.

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