the happy bin

How the project works

It is designed for 8 year olds to address an environmental problem

The Happy Bin project is designed for 8 year old Key Stage 2 pupils in UK Primary schools. It uses the existing school curriculum in a creative and artistic way to address a pressing environmental problem i.e. what do we do with our waste?

It uses professional puppetry to motivate pupils

Using puppets, the Happy Bin project introduces children to the problems of disposing waste in landfill or incineration. It reminds children of the possibilities of reuse and recycling but more importantly develops the theme further. It shows children the potential for reducing and refusing waste with collective positive community action.

Uses the internet to monitor progress and share ideas.

Following the initial puppet show, for six weeks, as part of their science, literacy, maths, IT and creative arts curriculum, the children work through a series of linked lessons. These help children to understand some of the environmental problems caused by the waste we produce and encourage them to explore ideas on how to reduce and refuse waste.

In addition, each week the children collect and weigh the waste produced at their school and e mail their results to this website. Both the total amount of waste produced by each school and the amount per pupil on roll will be displayed on this site.

Click on:

• The school's name to see its weekly performance
• The weekly figures which compare the performance of participating schools.

We hope that the incentive of emailing and publishing their school's weekly weight of waste will hopefully encourage pupils to reduce their consignment to landfill!

The children will also be able to share both their "good waste minimisation ideas" and their "waste minimisation problems" with pupils in other participating schools through the secure message board on this website.

Provides teacher training and resources to ensure long term sustainability

The Happy Bin project has been designed by practising teachers with knowledge of what can be practically achieved in a classroom. Training has been given to school staff about the workings of this specific project.

In addition, teachers have been provided with additional similar materials so that the project can be presented, as part of the ongoing curriculum, to successive groups of eight year olds in following years.

The future

Ecodyfi is managing both the financial workings and the appraisal of different stages of the project. Once the project has been tried and developed in local schools ecodyfi hopes that it can be "exported" out of the area.

The development costs will have been largely met by the initial project and it will provide a level of truly sustainable employment for a group of local people.