PLASTIC FREE TOWN PROJECT: BOTTLES AND STRAWS (SPANISH VERSION)

A Plastic Free School Project

Información para la campaña en bares y restaurantes

Información básica

- Cuando se produce un objeto de plástico de un solo uso (botellas, pajitas, bolsas, envoltorios…) se consumen muchos recursos naturales (petróleo, agua…) y energía. Muchas veces, es un gasto enorme para algo que utilizamos solo unos minutos.

- En el mundo se usan 1.000.000 de botellas de plástico cada minuto.

- Solo el 9% del plástico producido a lo largo de la historia se ha reciclado. El resto ha ido a basureros o espacios naturales.

- En los basureros, al descomponerse, el plástico contamina el suelo que cultivamos y el agua con la que regamos o que llega hasta nosotros.

- Las botellas y pajitas son ligeras y, cuando se abandonan o quedan a la intemperie, el viento y el agua las arrastran con facilidad hasta ríos y mares.

- El plástico tarda cientos de años en descomponerse. Se va fragmentando en partículas cada vez más pequeñas que flotan en el mar y son asimiladas por el plancton y por los animales marinos. Así entran en la cadena alimentaria y llegan a nosotros. Otras veces los matan por envenenamiento o asfixia o afectan a su capacidad reproductiva.

- El reciclaje de plástico es difícil. Es difícil de clasificar y, según su calidad, a menudo solo se puede reciclar una vez

- El cristal y el aluminio son mejores opciones porque se pueden reciclar indefinidamente. Pero todavía mejor es fomentar que se usen envases reutilizables. Reducir el la utilización de envases de un solo uso.

- El plástico agota nuestros recursos naturales y ahoga nuestros océanos y cada vez que vendemos o compramos una botella creamos más demanda para usar más plástico.

PREGUNTAS - ENCUESTA

1. Si alguien pide una botella de agua, ¿le dan una de plástico o una de cristal?

2. Si dan botellas de plástico, ¿por qué? ¿cuáles son sus ventajas?

3. ¿Los refrescos (Kas, Coca Cola, Fanta, tónica…) los venden en latas, en botellas de cristal o en botellas de plástico?

4. ¿Cuántas botellas de plástico de agua venden a la semana, más o menos?

5. Cuántas botellas de plástico de refrescos venden a la semana?

6. ¿Si alguien entra y les pide un vaso de agua del grifo, se lo dan? ¿Les parece mal?

7. ¿Ponen pajitas con las bebidas siempre / nunca / cuando los clientes las piden?

8. ¿Cuántas pajitas usan a la semana, más o menos?

9. ¿Separan el plástico y lo llevan a un contenedor de reciclaje? ¿Nunca, siempre, a veces?

10. Si no reciclan, ¿por qué?

11. ¿Creen que las botellas de plástico y las pajitas son necesarias?

Certifico que recibín información sobre a utilización de plásticos dun só uso a través dos seguintes alumnos de 2º de ESO do IES A Sangriña:

Comprométome a (sinalar o que corresponda):

____ Non vender botellas de auga de plástico.

____ Non vender refrescos en botellas de plástico.

____ Non proporcionar palliñas para beber a menos que sexan realmente necesarias.

____ Utilizar palliñas de papel ou reutilizables (de bambú / madeira, metal…)

____ Dar aos meus clientes o a quen a solicite auga da billa nun vaso de cristal.

____ Separar e depositar no contedor axeitado os envases que se utilicen no meu establecemento.

Nome:

Establecemento (tipo e Nome):

Sinatura:

Bye-bye to free single-use plastic bags.

A new year has begun, and, with it, great news for all of us who think there is no room for single-use plastic bags in our lives anymore.

Although many Spanish people are starting to bring their own reusable bags with them when they go shopping, some studies say that in Spain we used around 133 carrier bags per person in 2017. Only 10% of the bags we use are recycled. And we know what happens to the rest of them: they end up in landfills, in incinerators, or in water streams. 

The light-weight bags they give us in most supermarkets are the most dangerous and polluting kind. They are everywhere, they break easily and they are difficult to recycle, so they end up polluting rivers and seas with serious consequences on the ecosystems, on marine animals and on mankind.

It is clear that we need to reduce and finally stop using these bags. That is why a European Directive was introduced in 2017. According to it, all member states will have to change their policies. They have two options: 

- Limit the amount of plastic bags to 90 per person per year in 2020 and 40 by 2016. 

- Ban free plastic bags and charge for them.

The Spanish government has chosen the second option, and it has banned free plastic bags in our country. This means that, as of January 2018, all shops in Spain will have to ask their customers to pay a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 30 cents per bag. Prices may vary and they will depend on the types of bags we require.  For example, light and easily breakable bags will cost 10 cents (5 if they are compostable), and more resistant varieties 15 cents or more. Compostable bags will be a bit cheaper than non-compostable ones of the same weight.

As an exception, very light bags will still be free if they are necessary for hygiene or food conservation reasons, for example, the ones we use for bulk products or at the fruit and vegetables, fish, meat or cheese counters. 

So plastic bags will still be around and available. Still a lot of plastic... But we must remember that there are options for us. We can always say no to plastic bags and bring our own bags and containers with us. 

Looking forward to the day when we can say bye-bye to plastic bags for good.

School composting workshop

As a key part of our zero waste school project, we have designed a plan to start composting the food remnants from both the canteen and our students' snacks. Although the amount of organic matter collected from the bins in the common areas is not very big, a large number of people have lunch in the cafeteria twice a week and a considerable amount of organic waste is produced there.

To introduce the topic to our students, we have watched some videos about how important composting oganic matter is, what we can compost, how composting happens, the best conditions for our compost pile or bin, what we must do step by step... 

These are some of the materials we have used:

 

- CEIDA, resources for the classroom: El compostaje casero. (Spanish language)

- Composting at School, by US Composting Council. (With a very useful troubleshooting section)

- A Kids' Guide to Composting.

We have talked about all this, we have turned two old rubbish bins into compost buckets, carried out several composting workshops, organised the groups that will take care of our compost bins and control the process, and talked to the canteen staff to ask for their collaboration. 
This is a summary of one of our composting workshops with 1 ESO students:

Proxecto escolar "A Guarda sen plástico"

O motivo do noso proxecto e o que nos gustaría facer

Cando empezamos o curso, vimos que no instituto estabamos a producir moitos refugallos de distintos tipos, e moi especialmente plásticos, e non era posible reciclar ningún deles. 

Dende hai unhas semanas e gracias en gran parte ao traballo dos alumnos e profesores do departamento de automoción e carrocería, temos no centro cubos de lixo de distintas cores e, gracias ao seu traballo e os alumnos de plástica, contamos cun cubo para materia compostable na cafetería. 

Os alumnos de plástica están tamén empezando a deixar caixas para reutilizar e reciclar papel nas aulas. 

A partir de agora podemos reciclar prácticamente todo o lixo que producimos no centro e gustaríanos moito contar coa colaboración de todos. Como? Pois primeiro respetando e coidando dese material para reciclaxe e os lugares no que vai que dar colocado, e despois, claro, utilizándoo adecuadamente e seguir a guía de reciclaxe para  non mezclar distintos tipos de restos e que o persoal de limpeza e os rapaces encargados da compostaxe poidan manter esa separación fácilmente.

Este vídeo é un resumo da análise que fixemos e como fomos intentando cambiar algunhas cousas.

É esencial que lembres que, antes de reciclar, o máis importante é consumir con responsabilidade, e reducir sempre que sexa posible a utilización de materiais dun só uso ou perxudiciais para o medio ambiente. 

Á hora de reciclar, esta guía pode axudarte cando teñas dúbidas sobre o colector no que debes deixar cada material (deixaremos unha copia no voso taboleiro):

                             GUÍA DE RECICLAXE

Podes atopar máis información sobre o noso proxecto na conta de Youtube correspondente ao vídeo de arriba, en Instagram: @plasticfreeschool, e en Twitter: @PlasticFreeSchoolAG. Anímate a seguirnos e a compartir as túas ideas e imaxes connosco.

Recycling Art

Some of our students have volunteered to find and develop recycling ideas turning different kinds of materials into useful objects. 

For us, they have become examples of how we can reuse, give objects a second life in order to reduce pollution, save natural resources and enjoy ourselves by using our imagination. You'll find some of the objects they are making here. And we´ll keep adding more... Hope you'll find them interesting.

Newspaper pencilcase
and purse, by Elsa.

Water bottle pencilcase, 

by Carlota

Carlota has also turned some old newspapers into an original laundry basket. :)

Waste Bin Analysis 2

And... It is done! A group of kids who volunteered for the job have analysed the contents of all the waste bins in the common areas and some samples taken from classrooms in different parts of the school. 

They separated recyclable stuff from non recyclable items, counted and weighed the different recyclable or compostable fractions they found, wrote down those figures and found the corresponding percentages with the help if their maths teacher.

Now we know how many and what kind of bins we need in each area of the school. It's time for the Art teacher's to help their students customize the existing waste bins and work on the information panels and notes that will accompany them.

Waste Bin Analysis 1

Before we start customizing and thinking about the best locations for our waste bins, we must analyse the different types if waste we produce and the amount of waste of the different fractions. So this is our next step and we are doing it next Monday. Some students have volunteered to classify the waste we find in the bins in the different areas, weigh it, and fill in a form to find the proportions in the maths lessons later.

Our material is ready... 

Our school survey

The second stage of our Plastic Free Town project consists in carrying out a survey on the attitudes and habits of the members of the school community concerning waste reduction and waste management.

Writing down the questions that conform the survey has been, in our opinion, one of the most important activities of the project from the point of view of environmental education. Our students worked in groups, reflected upon the issue and reached agreements to decide on the most appropriate questions and answer options. The questions were written down in two languages: Galician and English, so that they can be delivered to the students in Galician and shared with our eTwinning workmates in Italy and Georgia.

During the third week of February, groups of three representatives of our 1ESO students (the classes involved in the project) will visit different classes in the school, explain what their project is about and ask them to fill in their survey form. The maths department has chosen the groups according to statistics selection criteria.

Classwork Aids: What do you recycle at home? The Unusual Suspects

     What do we usually recycle at home? 

And what do we fail to recycle?

 Watch the video and find out

Waste management at school 2

We believe that the unnecessary use of plastic and failing to recycle and recover it is an extremely serious environmental problem. Schools must make sure that the students get in contact with the basic principles of consumer education and environmental awareness, and there is a lot to do in our school in this area.

For these reasons we are going to ask the school board to help us make the following changes:


- Making recycling bins for plastics, paper and glass available in the hall, the canteen area and in some strategic points of the corridors. The Art and Visual Education Department of our school has offered to customize and adapt some of the bins we already have. 

- Making the containers for bottle lids and batteries more visible, and reminding all our students of the convenience and importance of using them. 

- Asking the school cleaning staff to to deposit the waste from the different recycling bins in the appropriate container outside the school and making this task as easy as possible for them.

- Making a compost bucket available by the canteen and providing enough composters to turn that organic waste into compost for the soil of the school vegetable garden.

- Carrying out an information and awareness-raising campaign about the need to reduce the use of plastic and recycle all types of materials conveniently.



- Trying to reduce the use of non reusable plastic bottles replacing them with reusable bottles, which may involve improving the quality of the water from the tap.

Waste management at school 1

Last December we analysed how much waste we are producing in our school and how this waste is managed. There are many, many problems to think about, lots of things to change. These were our conclusions:

- There are 20 waste bins in the school hall, but there aren't any recycling bins. The are two recycling bins (one for paper and one for plastic) in the staff room, a restricted area for the students.

- Upstairs, there are only three bins on the first floor, three on the second floor and no bins in the corridor of the third floor. All of them for mixed waste.

- There is a waste paper bin in each classroom, but students use them as mixed waste baskets.

- There are 9 mixed waste baskets in the school playground.

- There is a battery disposal box available to students at the reception desk.

- There is a box for the collection of bottle lids but it is behind the reception desk and most students don't know about it.

- Most students prefer to buy water at the canteen to drinking from the tap. Many of them think the tap water in our school is not good quality. Only a few students bring their own reusable bottles to school.

- Most students wrap their snacks in plastic film or foil and bring them to school in plastic bags they throw away here.

- If we take a look inside any of the waste bins we can see paper cups, plastic bottles, paper napkins, juice cartons, food remnants... All mixed up.

- There isn't a compost bucket for the food remnants, so they are all discarded in a mixed waste bin.

So this is what we have decided to do...

Amigos da Terra Galicia - Friends of the Earth Galicia en A Sangriña

Today 16 we have received a very special visit. Three representatives of Amigos da Terra Galicia came to our school for a lecture and workshop about cosumer education. 

They spoke about really interesting and relevant issues, such as:
- the need to preserve our natural resources.
- the importance of being critical, responsible consumers rejecting products that are harmful for our health or the environment or products that cause unfair social situations.
- the need to repair, reuse and swap to prolongue the useful life of objects... 

They finally helped us to design our "Plastic Free A Guarda" campaign. It was a really interesting exprerience and we have learnt a lot.

November and December 2016: Information input and awareness raising

During the months of November and December we have been talking about plastics in the Biology and English lessons. These are some of the topics we have talked about:

- How are plastics produced?
- What resources are necessary to produce plastic?
- Different types of plastic.
- How long does it take for plastic to decompose?
- What are the effects of the use of plastic on the environment?
- The Great Garbage Patch.
- The life of a plastic bottle.
- How to reduce the use of plastic. Alternatives.
- Many important Rs: Reject, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle, Rot,   Respect...
- How to use the yellow, blue and green recycling bins.
- What can we all do at school, at home, in shops...?

Some of the materials we have used can be found here: Blog de Víctor Gómez