Eco-Schools | Aultmore Park Primary School

Pupils at Aultmore Park Primary School wanted to reduce the amount of litter in their playground, and set up a house litter system to award points to the house that kept their part of the playground the cleanest.

In 2013/2014, many schools participating in Wrigley Litter Less decided to address litter problems within their school grounds. Pupils at Aultmore Park Primary School wanted to reduce the amount of litter in their playground, and set up a house litter system to award points to the house that kept their part of the playground the cleanest.

Pupils looked at the litter situation in the school grounds as part of their Eco-Schools Environmental Review.

They found that there were several things the school was doing well, such as having enough bins colour coded to match the house colours, and encouraging friendly competition among the school community, but there was room to improve by reducing the amount of litter blowing out of the bins on windy days.

Pupils set themselves three goals: to reduce litter in the playground, to reduce litter in the local community an to educate everyone about litter.

In order to achieve these three goals, they carried out litter audits, and set up a house litter system that assigned each house an area of the playground and give points and prizes
to the house that kept their area the cleanest.

Pupils organised a whole school community litter pick in our local area and held a litter competition following litter lessons.

They also learned a song called 'Litter Hurts' Funding from the Wrigley Litter Less campaign was used to purchase litter pickers.

Litter picking is now part of the school’s playground pals activities.

Aultmore Park pupils shared their Litter Less work with a school in Ireland, comparing what each did well and what could be done better.

They then shared our results of their Litter Less campaigns.