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Brisbane City Council is committed to keeping Brisbane clean and green by reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill and increasing resource recovery.
Setting up a Waste Smart Kindy is an opportunity for educators to learn more about waste minimisation, recycling and composting. Reducing waste is easy and benefits our environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conserving non-renewable resource for future generations.
In many ways, early childhood provides one of the most valuable opportunities to introduce children to waste concepts. Children who are enthusiastic about reducing their rubbish can become powerful advocates for sustainable behaviour as they get older. We often hear from parents that their children have come home from kindy and taught the whole family about the right bin for their rubbish!
Council is proud to support early childhood educators in their professional development through this free online course. Empowering our children with waste knowledge is not simply about creating a more sustainable society for today, it is an investment in every generation to come.
Learning outcomes for Unit one: Setting up a Waste Smart Kindy
Before you start Unit one: Setting up a Waste Smart Kindy
The first step to reducing waste at your centre is to conduct an audit. Collecting information about your centre’s current waste procedures will help you to identify the amount and types of waste sent to landfill, and highlight potential opportunities for minimising waste.
A waste audit is a process designed to analyse the amount and types of waste generated by your centre. It provides the baseline data against which all waste minimisation progress can be measured in the future.
There are two different types of waste audits that provide valuable information for minimising waste - a visual waste audit and a solid waste audit.
Complete the two audits below and click ‘Next ’to view your results.
Visual waste audit
A visual waste audit involves a visual inspection of waste and recycling bins to determine how full they are when they are put out for collection. This will allow you to determine how much waste is generated over the course of a 40 week year.
To complete the visual waste audit:
A solid waste audit involves an examination of the contents of at least one general waste bin to:
It does not matter if you examine a number of rubbish bins from the rooms within your centre, or alternatively one of the general waste bins that are picked up and emptied by the garbage truck. Whichever you choose, the total at the end must equal 100%.
Your centre throws out litres of waste each year, % of this waste is recycled. Your current waste profile is illustrated below.
Litres of waste generated per school year (40 weeks)
Results from the solid waste audit show that % of what is currently going in your general waste bins could be recycled and an additional % is organic waste that could be composted. In total, % of waste currently going to landfill could be recovered through recycling and composting.
The information that you have collected will assist you to create a waste management action plan and prioritise key issues.
Click on each of the following focus areas to develop your action plan.
When it comes to reducing waste, keep in mind the waste hierarchy, a simple but powerful strategy which helps us to prioritise our actions.
Avoiding and reducing the amount of waste you produce is the best way to minimise your rubbish and valuable resources can be saved from landfill through reuse and recycling.
The following are ideas to help you develop a tailored action plan for your centre. Your Waste Smart Kindy action plan will be automatically sent to your email address when you complete your list and click 'Next'.
Once you have finished planning your Waste Smart Kindy, it is time to put your ideas into practice.
Below are some tips to help you implement your Waste Smart Kindy action plan.
These free resources are available to download to help support you to set up a Waste Smart Kindy.
These resources are relevant to the unit you have now completed. Make sure you download the resources you would like to keep before selecting 'Submit'.
