450 Pupils team up with bpha to get Bedford recycling

National Recycling Week

Housing association bpha has teamed up with pupils at Shackleton Primary School to encourage the Bedford community to make a difference by recycling.

The focus is on how much even small changes can make a difference. For instance, recycling one aluminium can will save enough energy to power a TV for up to three hours. While recycling paper uses 70% less energy than making it from raw materials.

In the UK, we recycle around 45% of recyclable waste so there’s a lot more we can do. bpha has been running a campaign called Talking Trash to encourage residents to recycle more.

As part of the campaign, and to mark National Recycling Week, it asked pupils at Shackleton Primary School to take part in a competition to design a poster for display in bin stores at bpha sites.

“You can see that a lot of thought has gone into the winning designs, and we were overwhelmed with the number and quality of entries”

Around 450 children took up the challenge, with teachers whittling the entries down to 10 designs for a panel to consider. Four joint winners’ designs are now being made into posters which will go on display later this month.

Winners received a £10 book token each and £100 worth of tokens for the school.

Rosetta Triolo, bpha Community Engagement Manager, and competition organiser said:

“Pupils at the school were already learning about environmental initiatives, so the recycling competition fitted perfectly with the school’s curriculum.

You can see that a lot of thought has gone into the winning designs, and we were overwhelmed with the number and quality of entries.

“We want to make it as easy as possible for residents to recycle their waste. In areas where we have bin stores, there are separate crates for plastic, tins, paper and cardboard.

We hope the posters will not only encourage residents to put their waste into the correct bins but also give them a sense of pride that they’re doing something positive for our younger generation.”

“We hope the posters will not only encourage residents to put their waste into the correct bins but also give them a sense of pride that they’re doing something positive for our younger generation”

Ben Slater, Deputy Headteacher at Shackleton Primary School, was keen to highlight the benefits to pupils of working alongside bpha to help make a difference locally.

He said:

“This collaboration with bpha provides our children with a real-life context for the work they do in school. It also gives them the opportunity to see life outside of their community and how what they do, can impact others.

Thank you very much for the vouchers; we were able to purchase some books specific for reading with babies and toddlers in our family zone.”