Recycling Paper!

Me and Pauline collaborate on creating the newspaper, but the obvious result from printing such vast quantities of (undoubtedly amazing and brilliant) content, is that there is a lot of paper wasted. Paper which otherwise would have been able to continue growing as a tree and giving us oxygen. 

So naturally, we sharply felt the need to do something about all this waste we'll be adding to the land-fill, and we came up with a strategy to minimize it. We call it the recycling initiative.

It’s particularly difficult in Moscow to arrange for the state to help you recycle, so the only way we could utilize all this paper was by setting up a system ourselves. We placed small bins in form-room classrooms, and a big bin near the staff room into which the little ones would need to be emptied by students in the form room during registration.

Our eventual aim is to make sure than little to no paper is thrown out into the regular garbage, and that students are educated about the importance of recycling so they can form this habit for life and work towards a less wasteful society.

The way we shall do this is by implementing the new system in strategic classrooms, raising awareness about it and overall educating students on recycling, to renew their interest and participation in the program and just make them more aware of its importance. Only 2% of waste is recycled in Moscow, so we certainly cannot change anything overnight, but perhaps after our school, other BIS schools will follow suit, after them other international schools, then state schools, and in time at all, the whole of Russia may be taking their paper to recycling plants! At this point in time, probably not, but nonetheless..

Yay recycling!

We've been preparing our recycling program for quite a while now. Our first step was to think of the logistics of collecting the paper. We decided that the best choice would be to place small, inconspicuous bins, which wouldn't take too much away from the aesthetics of the classrooms we placed them in, yet be noticeable enough to remind people that we are collecting paper.

I managed to purchase around 20 decorated little bins onto which we stuck labels designed by ourselves. Putting them into the classrooms themselves took around two weeks, not because our school is that big, but because we wanted to be absolutely certain of the logistics of the entire thing before we made any announcements. Our rationalization behind this was that we wanted this program to really seem important, meaningful and thought-out, an impression we couldn't possibly convey if we had to change instructions around multiple times, and running the risk of information getting lost along the way. Having one big block announcement, which would effectively convey the details of the scheme seemed like a far better idea, so we had to wait until Pauline managed to secure the big main bin before we could act. 

Then, last Sunday, she told me she had it, and we made arrangements to announce on Monday to the entire school. Since we couldn't possibly cover all the classrooms, even in the extended registration period of 20 minutes, we assembled a team of people and gave them a classroom and bin each. Despite our efforts to make this all go as smoothly as possible, we forgot the two year seven classes, and missed them completely. We ran all the way there in the last five minutes, but didn't manage to catch (they'd gone to PE) so we left asked Ms. Platt, their form tutour, to brief them about it, especially since she herself assured us that she is well acquainted with the nature of paper recycling. 

In hindsight, I have to agree with the observation that the bins are a touch too small to cope with the amount of paper they will be receiving, especially in some of the more paper-intensive classrooms, but they come in a variety of different designs and are somewhat nice considering they are essentially waste-paper basket. Their different appearance stresses the fact that they are not for conventional waste though, something we hugely underlined when going round the classrooms. The last thing we want is food in there, because quite frankly it's disrespectful to us and our effort to do something for the school, but also because it ruins all of paper in the small bin since the whole batch then has to be thrown away. So I personally did my best to scare people into not even thinking about throwing anything that isn't paper into the paper bin, even going so far as threatening to withdraw bins from offending classrooms.

The last and final step, after announcing, was to actually wait and see if any paper would be collected, and in the meantime, contact the collection point I had found nearby to arrange a time when they would accept it. 

On Thursday, we decided to check how our big bin was doing, and found that it was totally full! For a single week we had managed to fill up the whole thing. Well, not us, but the students and teachers of the school. So I called the lovely ladies of the Bitsevskiy Park Recycling collection point, and they told me that their working times are generally until 3, but that the point itself remained open for self-service until five o'clock. Now all that remains is getting all those kilograms of paper there, which seems to be a rather challenging task, considering I could barely lift a quarter of the paper from the bin after we had we transferred into a big blue bag for easier carrying. 

We'll be trying to take the paper around on Tuesday, when both of us are available after school, because although later on only one of us will go each week, for the first time it would be best if both of us were to get to know the place together, especially since I'd have to show Pauline were it actually is. 

We will certainly apologise to Mr. Carruthers for temporarily having to store the big bag of paper in his E.S.S. room since the bin is already overflowing, and thank him for all the support.