Neat Streets Case Studies @neatstreetscs-blog - Tumblr Blog

Firhouse Community College

Number of Students: 773

Location: Firhouse Road, Firhouse, Dublin 24

School Type: Co-Educational

Committee: The committee of Firhouse Community College was initially setup by the coordinator Ms Kennedy. The committee is made up of students, teachers and grounds staff.

Introduction Workshop: Early in the academic year the Neat Streets Officer called out to the school and met with the committee in order to introduce the Neat Streets programme and how it should fit into the plans of the committee and help improve the litter and waste situation at the school through an Action Plan workshop.

Neat Streets Conference: In January, four student members of the committee and their coordinating teacher attended the Neat Streets Conference where they met with other students and teachers from across the country and discussed approaches and ideas for addressing litter and waste in their schools and communities.

Cleanups: A weekly rota was set up by the committee to arrange emptying of school bins and a wider rota within the whole school (excluding 3rd and 6th years) was set up to carry out lunchtime litter picks.

Action Day: The committee as a whole met in order to plan an action day to raise awareness of litter and waste issues within the school and wider community. The meeting resulted in so many good ideas that it was decided to extend it to an ‘Action Week’.

Throughout the Action Week, each year group took part in a clean-up covering various parts of the school and the wider community, in order to give students an insight into the local litter and waste situation. They subsequently got an article published in a local newspaper, with circulation of over 30,000. They also held a Green Quiz and the final judging of their poster competition was held.

The school has actively lobbied the South Dublin County Council, with assistance from the Neat Streets Officer to get public bins installed in identified litter black spots. They are also in talks with the local pizzeria to assist in purchasing these bins. This is still ongoing but a positive result is hoped for soon. They also set up WEEE battery recycling throughout the school.

Site Visit: The school visited Thorton’s Recycling Depot., organised by the Neat Streets Officer. During this visit the school were given a presentation by two of the staff at Thorton’s, followed by a visit to the recycling processing plant. This visit gave a great insight to the issues that are faced by the recycling industry and helped the school deliver a school-wide campaign on the benefits of recycling properly.

TY Link: The Neat Streets committee comprised mainly of TY students, who found the TY page on the Neat Streets website very useful, which they used throughout the academic year.

Grant: The committee used the Neat Streets grant in order to fund several competitions throughout the action week and throughout the year. The grant also stretched to fund new recycling bins for the school.

Tree Planting: Early during the year the caretaker of the school suddenly passed away. The committee were forming a close bond with Jim, so the Neat Streets Officer donated an oak tree which was planted in his memory on the school grounds. The committee carried his memory throughout their Neat Streets journey and dedicated their certification to him.

#neatstreets litter firhousecollege

Bandon Grammar School

Number of Students: 670

Location: Bandon, Co. Cork

School Type: Co-Educational

Students of Bandon Grammar set up a committee with the help of their Geography teacher Helen Redmond in October 2016. Once the committee was established it measured and assessed litter and waste issues by completing a baseline survey and establishing what specific issues should be tackled over the coming year.

Introduction Workshop: Following on from completing the baseline survey the students invited the Neat Streets Programme Officer to the school to deliver the introduction and Action Plan workshops. The workshops explained to the students and coordinating teacher what the programme is all about, while also acting as a brain storming session on innovative ways to tackle the issues that were highlighted in the baseline survey.

Beach Clean Ups: The students decided to take action against the identified local litter black spots on some of their local beaches and organised litter picks on these beaches to highlight the problems associated with littering. They spent a whole day cleaning the beaches, with the assistance of the neat Streets Officer. Since then, some of the students have regularly carried out beach clean ups on their own time on Sundays.

Action Days: In carrying out the baseline survey the students identified the need for outdoor bins on the school grounds, so with the €200 grant assistance, they built 3-in-1 bins to provide separate bins for Green, Black and Brown waste.

They also decided to rotate 30 minute shifts of carrying out the school cleaner’s duties, with each volunteer entered into a draw for a prize of a shopping voucher.

The students organised guest speakers to talk to the students throughout the regular class timetable and during the lunch breaks several events were organised such as a wishing tree, treasure hunt, bottle bowling, eco footprints and a ‘trash dash’.

Fund-raiser: The student committee wanted to do something for the community and through discussions, decided to carry out a waste related fund-raiser. They identified the inter-connectedness of many environmental issues, resulting in the funds raised going to a local homeless charity. Through various events, such as selling packs of sweets in recycled packaging made from their Neat Streets provided litter pickers; selling hedgehogs they knitted, which were housed in recycled shoe boxes, they raised €3,109

Art: The school organised a school-wide poster competition and also had a good presence within the #Instabin photo competition, with the picture above Thursday’s Instabin winner.

Bandon Grammar attended the Cork Neat Streets Conference and found the workshops a great help for them to identify best methods to communicate litter and waste issues, which they subsequently employed within the wider school population.

#neatstreets litter bandongrammar

Ardgillan Community College

Number of Students: 805

Location: Balbriggan, Co. Dublin

School Type: Co-Educational

In October 2016 students of Ardgillan registered for the Neat Streets programme and began their work on the overall goal of tackling litter in their school. Students from across the school were invited to apply to be members of the committee within the school, 15 students representing all year groups were selected.

Once the committee was established they contacted the Neat Streets programme officer for some advice on what could be done in their secondary school. The first piece of advice was to assess current litter and waste issues by completing the baseline survey. They went further and created an extra survey to delve deeper into litter behaviours and recycling habits. The information collated was shared with the school and a report was written. They also drew a map of litter blackspots and shared that on their new Green Notice board.

Introduction Workshop: Following on from completing the baseline survey the students invited the Neat Streets Programme Officer out to the school to deliver the introduction workshop. The students presented the findings of the baseline survey, a brain storming session was then undertaken to develop and propose ideas to tackle the issues highlighted; such as the lack of any recycling facilities in the school.

Recycling Bins: The first step in the action plan devised during the introduction workshop was to introduce recycling bins into the school in order to reduce the levels of waste to landfill. The committee made bins for every classroom from discarded cardboard sourced from the school. Bins for the office areas of the school were funded using some of the Neat Streets grant funding the school received from An Taisce. Signs were made for the bins, but after initial failure of the students to correctly put litter into recyclable/non-recyclable bins, they moved the signs onto the bins and policed the bins for a few weeks, which greatly improved this issue. They also developed a Design-A-Bin competition (Figure 9) and made a Slam Dunk The Junk game, with an old basketball hoop, which were both very popular.

Community Clean Up: The students decided to organise a rota for students to empty the classroom bins and conduct a clean-up in the local area and around the school on a regular basis which gave the students a sense of ownership and connection with their local community. They worked with Balbriggan Tidy Towns committee and also with a local artist, Thomas Breezing, to make a piece from old footballs.

Green Week: During their Green Week, they held a whole host of events, including: a fashion show (based on the school’s Junk Kotture entries); a sports day, using recycled materials to play rounders, rubbish sorting competition etc.; Showed several environmental movies including An Inconvenient Truth and Before The Flood; held talks with Trocaire, Aidan Gray from An Taisce’s Clean Coasts and the Neat Streets Officer; held a Flash Mob and celebrated with pizza at the end of the week for the committee who organised all the events.

Media: This school held an amazing social media presence, through their Facebook and Instagram accounts, they reached over 19,000 people. All of their competitions, events and information were shared through these platforms and they shared a lot of their posts with their local Tidy Towns group, which also helped. They were also the overall winners of the #Instabin competition. They also made announcements over the school intercom, promoted Paperless Days, to encourage greater use of power point etc., and drafted a new school policy to include a greater emphasis on environmental issues.

Ardgillan were a very active school throughout the year and they found the support of Neat Streets invaluable. They took onboard many of the suggestions given to them by Neat Streets and took many good ideas back to their school from the Neat Streets conference which they worked into action.

#neatstreets ardgillan litter

Our Neat Streets Officer Gary is busy visiting the schools who have signed up for this years programme for the first time. Thirty schools have signed up and so far there has been a great response, with lots of very creative ideas being formed by the schools for their Action Plans.

If your school has not carried out its baseline survey yet, please do so before beginning any of your great work to improve your school and its local community.

#neatstreet

New Cross College

Number of Students: 350

Location: Finglas, Dublin 11

School Type: Co-Educational

in September 2015 students of New Cross College registered for the Neat Streets programme and began their work on the overall goal of tackling the issue of litter in their school. Students from across the school were invited to apply to be members of the committee within the school, 18 students representing all year in the school were selected.

Once the committee was established they contacted the Neat Streets programme officer for some advice on what could be done in their secondary school. The first piece of advice was to assess the current state of the litter and waste issue by completing baseline survey.

Introduction Workshop: Following on from completing the baseline survey the students invited the Neat Streets Programme Officer out to the school to deliver the introduction workshop. The students presented the findings of the baseline survey, a brain storming session was then undertaken with the aid of the Neat streets programme officer in order to propose ideas to tackle the issue highlighted such as the lack of any recycling facilities in the school.

Recycling Bins: The first step in the action plan divised during the introduction workshop was to introduce recycling bin into the school in order to reduce the levels of waste to landfill. The committee contacted the schools’ waste contractor, who sponsored bins for the classrooms. Bins for the general purpose areas of the school were funded using some of the Neat Streets grant,

Community Clean Up: The students decided to organised a rota for students to conduct a clean in the local area around the school on a regular basis thus giving the students a sense of ownership to their local community.

Bin It Roadshow: The 1st and 2nd year students were treated to the Wrigley supported Bin It Roadshow, which highlighted the issue of littering to the students.

Results

The follow-on survey carried out by New Cross College highlighted an increase in recycling rates from 0% identified in the baseline survey to 50% by the end of the academic year. This increase in recycling rates highlight a fantastic shift in the school towards diverting waste from landfill.

#Newcross #Neatstreets #recycling #Litter #Waste

St Raphael’s College, Loughrea

Number of Students: 520

Location: Loughrea, Co. Galway

School Type: Co-Educational

Students of St Raphael’s College setup a committee with the help of the teaching staff and principal in September 2015. Once the committee was established they contacted the Neat Streets programme officer for some advice on what could be done in their secondary school. The first piece of advice was to assess the current state of the litter and waste issues by completing baseline survey and establishing what specific issues should be tackled over the coming year.

Introduction Workshop: Following on from completing the baseline survey the students invited the Neat Streets Programme Officer out to the school to deliver the introduction workshop. The workshop explained to the students and coordinating teacher what the programme is all about, while also acting as a brain storming session on how the students on innovative ways to tackle the issues that arose in the baseline survey.

Community Clean Up: The students decided to take action against the 40% of students littering in the wider community and organised a litter pick in the local community to highlight the problems associated with littering.

Action Day: In carrying out the baseline survey the students identified that 70% of the students in the school were littering on school grounds on a regular basis. This staggering finding required urgent action and the students organised an action days to highlight to issue to the whole student body.

The student organised guest speakers to talk to the students throughout the regular class timetable and during the lunch breaks several events were organised such as a wishing tree, treasure hunt, bottle bowling, eco footprints and a ‘trash dash’.

Bin Transformation: Throughout the academic year participating in the Neat Streets programme the student committee highlighted a need update the labelling and visually refresh the bins within the school in order to ensure the entire student body could correctly use the binsnewly labelled bins in Blessington Community College

Recycling bin made from bottles

Newly labeled bins in the school.

Results

The follow-on survey carried out by St Raphael’s College highlighted a 50% reduction waste to landfill from 2200L to 3300L thus highlighting the effectiveness of the bin labelling detailed above. The follow-on survey also identified a reduction of students littering in the school by 30 points, from 70% to 40%.

Presentation College Bray

Committee

The committee of Presentation College Bray was initially setup by the coordinator Ms Jay. The committee is made up of students, staff and members of the parents association meaning any decision made by the committee has the full backing of all the stakeholders within the school and the wider committee.

Introduction Workshop

Early in the academic year, Eoin Morton (Neat Streets Officer) called out to the school and met with MS Jay in order to explain the Neat Streets programme and how it fit into the plans of the committee and how the programme could help.

Neat Streets Conference

In November, four student members of the committee attended the Neat Streets Conference where they met with students and teachers from across the country and discussed litter & waste issues in their schools and communities.

Action Day

The committee as a whole met in order to plan an action day to raise awareness of the the litter and waste issues within the school and wider community, so many good ideas were discussed that it was decided to have an ‘Action Week’.

Through out the week, each year group took part in a clean up covering various parts of the school and the wider community in order to give students an insight into the local litter and waste issues.

The students designed a gallery of images displaying the litter blackspots in the local area and displayed them on the digital screen around the school.

Several competitions were organised for the week, including a poster and a recycled sculpture competitions which where a great sucess.

Grant

The committee used the Neat Streets grant in order to fund several competitions throughout the action week and throughout the year. The grant also stretched to fund new recycling bins for the school.

#recycling #litter #Bray

Margaret Alyward Secondary School

Number of Students: 250

Location: Whitehall, Dublin

All Girls

Neat Streets: 2012-13

Committee

Margaret Alyward teacher Ms. Mc Caul decided to register to school for the Neat Streets programme following registering for the Green-Schools.

Once liaising with the Neat Streets programme officer, Ms Caul decided to give over the reins of the programme to the newly established student committee which was setup with 2 representatives from each class in the school, parents & staff.

Introduction workshop

Once setup, the committee invited the Neat Streets programme officer to the school to deliver the introduction workshop. The workshop was delivered to the entire committee within a 40 minute class.

Research

The newly formed committee set about undertaking a litter and waste audit in the school and wider community in order to establish the status quo. As part of this research the committee under took the Neat Streets Baseline survey which asks the committee to assess the levels of recycling and general waste in the school, and also to investigate the litter black spots in the school.

The committee decided to further investigate the issue of littering in the school with a student survey to investigate to attitudes towards litter and litter across the student body.

The committee decided to take action against the findings they found most startling, such as 2/3 of students would litter due a bin not being nearby, 1/3 couldn’t be bother to find a bin & 100% of participants had never taken part in a litter pick prior to participation in the Neat Streets programme.

Increase Number of Bins

Following the student committee research into student behaviour they firstly decided to tackle the issue of the lack of bins in the school. The students applied for the Neat Streets grant which partly fund the new bins. A recycling & general waste bin was placed in each classroom and also recycling stations were positioned around the corridors of the school. Each student in the school is provided with a breakfast and lunch in the school and in order to reduce the amount of food waste being a produce the students decided to construct a compost bin. The compost is used on the school grounds for flower beds.

Ni Maith Loim Gum

One of leading streams of littering found during the students research was chewing gum. The committee decided to take drastic action against gum, banning it from the school. A fine for students chewing gum was also introduced, these fines were donated to a local charity at the end of the year.

Spring clean

During the month of April the students and teachers of Margaret Alyward took to the street of Whitehall in order to tackle the litter in the area. The students approached the local shops in the area for some sponsored refreshments which were kindly donated in addition with come staff time to aid the students clean up. The clean up was carried out with the aid of an Taisce’s National Spring Clean.

Beach clean

The clean up of the local area was such a success and teacher of the school decided to treat the students of the school with a trip to the beach, and they brought along their litter pickers again. The beach clean was organised with the help of the Neat Streets programme officer and An Taisce’s Clean Coasts Programme.

St Mary’s Mallow

St Mary’s, Mallow

Number of Students: 500+

Location: Mallow, Co. Cork

School Type: All Girls

Representation on the Neat Streets committee at St Marys was opened to applicants from across the student body and ultimately 15 students were selected from both the junior & senior cycles.

Introduction Workshop: The coordinating teachers facilitated the Neat Streets introduction workshop with An Taisce early in the new academic year. The workshop focused on working with the students to decide what they themselves wanted to do as part of the programme, the students decided to focus on implementing recycling within the school, reducing littering while also raising awareness of what is recyclable.

Neat Streets Conference: Eight members of the student committee travelled to Cork city centre for the Neat streets conference where they met with students and teachers from three other schools from county Cork and discussed litter & waste issues in their schools and communities.

New Recycling Bins: The first port of call of the student committee was to purchase new recycling bins to increase the amount of recycling in the school. The students used the Neat Streets Grant to fund this purchase.

Action Day: The student committee decided to have a whole school Action Day to highlight the issues of litter and waste in the school. They invited the Neat Streets programme officer to the school to speak to each class group across the launch day highlighting the new recycling bins in the school and what can be put in them. The students also organised games, competitions & prizes during lunch time.

Not Recyclable Campaign: The committee design a campaign for all students to highlight that crisp packets & wrappers are not recyclable, using; a poster competition, poetry competition & a slogan competition. The winner of each competition won a Neat Streets hoodie.

National Spring Clean: Over 60 students took part in a town-wide clean-up event for Mallow. The event was opened by Irish Womens Rugby star Heather O’Brien on a Saturday morning in April and was a massive success with a huge amount of litter collected throughout the morning.

Fingal Community College

Number of Students: 600

Location: Swords, Co. Dublin

School Type: Co-Educational

From the outset students from all year groups were invited to join the Neat Streets committee; the first meeting had just a handful of students, the numbers have however gradually increased over the year of participation reaching over 25 active members.

Baseline Survey: The students of the college carried out the Neat Streets baseline survey in order to establish the current state of affairs prior to the commencement of any actions to tackle the issue of litter and waste. The baseline survey identified that 28% of the waste produced in the school was recycled with 72% going to landfill. It also found 17 litter black spots and highlighted 40% of students littered both in the school and in the wider community.

Introduction Workshop: The student committee of Fingal Community College invited the Neat Streets Programme Officer to the school in September to deliver the Introduction Workshop. The introduction workshop explained the Neat Streets Programme to the committee and also a short brainstorming session on how to tackle the issues that arose from the baseline survey. The committee was split into 5 groups and the group that came up with the best idea for tackling litter and waste was awarded Neat Streets hoodies.

Recycling Centre Trip: In order to develop their action plan further the committee took a trip to their local recycling centre in Swords, where they heard from the facility manger on the type of recyclable materials processed and their life cycles. They also met with Fingal County Council’s Environmental Awareness Officer who explained their role in waste management and awareness for the county.

Neat Streets Conference: Four members of the committee and the coordinating teacher attended the Neat Streets conference in Dublin in October. The conference provided a platform for ideas and information sharing where the students and teachers learned from each other and a model school that achieved the Neat Streets Award & Green Flag in the previous academic year.

New Bins: The committee took action against the lack of bins, in particular recycling bins in their school. The students applied for the Neat streets grant in order to fund the purchase.

Action Day: The committee ran an action day in order to inform the entire student body of their progress. The action day consisted of a workshop with all classes. A recycling quiz was also held at lunch time, students were asked to place an item in either a recycling or general waste bin and if correct they given a prize. The prizes were funded with the reminder of the Neat Streets grant. The students also took part in a lunchtime litter pick.

Blessington Community College

Number of Students: 520

Location: Blessington, Co Wicklow

School Type: Co-Educational

Students of Blessington Community College setup a committee with the help of the teaching staff and principal in September 2014. Once the committee was established they contacted the Neat Streets programme officer for some advice on what could be done in their secondary school. The first piece of advice was to assess the current state of the litter and waste issue by completing baseline survey.

Introduction Workshop: Following on from completing the baseline survey the students invited the Neat Streets Programme Officer out to the school to deliver the introduction workshop. The workshop explained to the students and coordinating teacher what the programme is all about, while also acting as a brain storming session on how the students could tackle the issues that arose in the baseline survey.

Community Clean Up: The students decided to take action against the 40% of students littering in the wider community and organised a litter pick in the local community to highlight the problems associated with littering.

Aviva Stadium Visit: The student committee of Blessington community College visited the national soccer and rugby stadium in order to learn of how they introduced recycling into the stadium and how they raised awareness amongst attendees. The students were also kindly offered tour around the stadium following the delivery of the waste presentation.

Bin Transformation: Throughout the academic year participating in the Neat Streets programme the student committee highlighted a need update the labelling of the bins within the school in order to ensure the entire student body could correctly use the bins.

St Kilian’s Community School

Number of Students: 500

Location: Bray, Co Wicklow

School Type: Co-Educational

A main focus for St. Killian’s Neat Streets programme was the issue of litter in their school and local community. The students initially carried out a baseline survey and found that 50% of students were littering in the school and the wider community. After some further research students found that the most likely reason for this high level of littering was due to a lack of bins.

Bins: Students contacted OZO, the school’s waste contractor who kindly donated both general waste and recycling bins for the corridors and general purpose areas around the school. The committee also applied for the Neat Streets grant in order to fund recycling & general waste bins in all classrooms.

Student Awareness: To address the lack of knowledge of recyclable materials among their peers the committee collected the bins after lunch break and put the rubbish out on the floor to display what waste was put into both the recycling and general waste to the entire student body. Each class group was then informed by the committee members on the correct waste that should be put into each bin.

To further increase student awareness the committee also added newly design bin lids to the general waste bins in order to further highlight the differences between the two different types of bins within the school.

Litter Audit: The Transition Year group of St Kilian’s aided the committee by conducting a number of litter audits throughout the year. The initial litter audit carried out in September found over 400 pieces of litter around the school and its grounds, with over 150 pieces on the Basketball courts. A follow-up audit was carried out in April which found some startling result, the total number of pieces of litter around the survey sites in the school under 100, a 75 percentage point decrease.

Cleanest Social Area: The school decided to run a ‘Tidy Social Area’ as each year group was challenged to keep their social area tidy over a one month period. Each social area was graded every day and at the end of the month the class group with the tidiest overall social area received pizzas as a reward.

St Raphaela’s Secondary School

Number of Students: 600 +

Location: Stillorgan, Dublin

School Type: All Girls

Motto: Prior to the commencement of their action plan the students of St Raphaela’s decided to give themselves a motto to set the student body on the right path and ensure they kept focused on their main objective throughout the year, ‘RECYCLING ’ was chosen.

Litter Black Spots: As part of the baseline survey students assessed the school for litter levels and identified the litter black spots within the school. The idea behind doing this was so students gained an understanding of the original status of litter in the school so they could then look to improve it over the academic year.

New Bins: The first step in the action plan for the committee was to address the lack of recycling bins in the school. The Board of Management at the school funded these purchases, which allowed the Neat Streets grant to be kept aside for other action plan events that the students on the committee planned to carry out later in the year.

Litter Lunch Duty: During the baseline survey the committee highlighted that the prime time for littering by students within the school was lunch time. In order to tackle this issue the committee setup a rota for students and teaching staff to monitor littering and waste management during lunch time. This has been highlight as one of the reasons for the 30 percentage point decrease in litter levels achieved within the school.

Tidy Classrooms Pizza Day: Between the months of September and April a tidy classrooms competition was held, with each classroom being judged daily by teaching staff, on top of this each classroom also received bonus points for the correct materials in the recycling and general waste bins. The class with the most points at the end of the year won a ‘pizza day’ where each student in the class received pizza and got to watch a movie.

This was a very successful competition formulated by students during the Neat Streets conference, put together during the Introduction Workshop in the school and funded with the Neat Streets grant.

Clothes drive: As part of their reach into the community the students ran a clothes drive to collect unwanted clothing for recycling and reuse and also to raise money for a local charity. The students collected 300kg of clothing in total.

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