Management Systems

Managing recycling and waste in your school is a vital part of your climate action plan, and involves both students and staff. Assessing your current waste management practices and identifying areas for improvement will help create a sustainable environment that evolves with your school's needs.

Managing recycling and waste in your educational establishment

Recycling and waste management is a key component of your school’s climate action plan and is an activity that both students and staff can effectively contribute to. In this section, we outline the steps you can take to effectively manage your school’s recycling and waste as well as ideas for integrating the waste hierarchy within your school’s sustainability architecture.

Assess your school’s needs

Understanding where you stand now is vital to understanding where you go next. Your school’s designated sustainability lead, in conjunction with the site manager and student engagement, should work together to assess your school's current baseline regarding recycling and waste management.

To do this, you may want to:

conduct a waste audit to identify the type and amount of waste being generated across your establishment, and by whom
ensure you map how recycling and waste is currently organised and collected including any costs. This will help manage current processes and identify opportunities for future changes

Designing a waste management plan

Once you’ve built up an accurate picture of your school’s current position, it is important to put together a plan that will set out the actions you will take to ensure your school or setting has a sustainable waste infrastructure. A waste management plan can form part of your broader climate action plan.

Reflecting on the results of your waste audit whilst aiming toward a more sustainable future, a clear plan will allow your school to address:

meeting the legal requirements for waste segregation and collection
this includes upcoming simpler recycling rules, as well as existing legislation that mandates that segregated waste must remain segregated by collectors
investing in new bins and signage in the places they are needed
setting specific and measurable targets for reducing waste
engaging staff and students about sustainable behaviours
monitoring responsibilities, successes, and continued improvement

Organising the right service

Once you’ve put together an action plan for managing your waste, the next step will be ensuring that your contracted waste collector can provide the services that you require.

Schools with over ten full-time employees will be required to have separate collections of general waste, food waste, paper & card, and other dry mixed recycling from 31 March 2025. Confirming that your waste collection provider can adapt to this service change is important to ensure that your school is compliant.

Alternatively, you could procure a new waste collection provider who can cater for your establishment’s needs. Another option is to contact your local council who are required to help ensure that you have a viable waste collection service.

Monitoring your progress

Once your plan is in place, it is important to regularly monitor the effectiveness of the changes your school have made. Some of the metrics you may wish to periodically measure include:

conduct follow up waste audits to review how well the bins are being used
the cost effectiveness of your waste collection contractor. A decrease in general waste collection, and an increase in dry and food recycling should make your costs go down over time
staff and student feedback – knowing how the users of your school’s recycling and waste services feel will help you keep improving the system in future

Doing regular check-ups on your school’s recycling and waste management will ensure that you’re creating a sustainable environment, minimising waste, and keeping your climate action goals evolving with the needs of your school. Ultimately, your school’s waste management system will enjoy the most success when the whole school community has ownership of and a stake in.

For a more detailed breakdown of how to develop your school’s recycling and waste management strategy – including best practice case studies - read through WRAP’s Workplace Recycling Guide for Education for more information and resources. Sustainable Support for Schools also provides a strategic breakdown of how to manage your school’s waste and recycling.