Thankfully, it's not often that one gets the opportunity to go through and count a day's worth of school rubbish! For our school Enviro team, however, this was a most interesting and informative exercise which we carried out last week.

We discovered that on an average school day, Howick Intermediate generates a total of 28.14kg of rubbish and 3.38kg of paper. The paper is currently recycled but all other waste has been going to the landfill. Of this landfill waste, 13.84kg is compostable, 9.24kg could be recycled and only 3.38kg is non-divertable and needs to go to landfill.

Our current costs for removing rubbish from our school, works out to approximately $16.53c per student per year.

This exercise has really given us clear direction on where to concentrate our next efforts in managing the school's waste....we'll certainly be looking at our compostable waste...watch this space!

Thanks to all our Enviro monitors who carry out their duties uncomplainingly everyday and helped us count rubbish! We truly appreciate your efforts greatly!​