Contact Details
- 020 8567 9524
- admin@fielding.ealing.sch.uk
Wyndham Road, Ealing, London, W13 9TE
Fielding
Primary School and Nursery
As this year’s theme was a garden party, it was decided to make changes to our fair to make it more sustainable.
The Fielding Primary branded reusable metal water bottles were launched at the Summer fair and were a sell-out success and we will look to order some more for next school year. Refreshments changed from bottled drinks to these bottles or reusable deposit cups with unlimited free squash and water, which proved popular, meant no disposable cups used this year at the school fair and a reduction in plastic bottles.
Refill not landfill: Saving the world one cup at a time
We also used reusable deposit drinks cups at the bar, refreshments and smoothie stall.
It was one pound deposit per reusable cup that could be used again and again. When finished with the cup, it could be returned and your pound given back or kept for other occasions. Thanks to Artisan Coffee www.artisancoffee.co.uk, who sponsored the cups we were able to invest in this scheme. The cups were provided from Green Goblet www.green-goblet.com. We planned to have reusable Fielding Primary hot drink cups but didn't arrive in time so they will be ready for next event.
So how many disposable cups did we save from going to landfill?
At the Fielding Summer fair 395 half pints and 25 pint cups were used. That’s just over 400 disposable cups stopped from going to into our waste.
Taptastic not plastic
The 100 reusable Fielding water bottles, also saved more disposable cups and bottles being used. The bottles meant kids to have unlimited squash and tap water without the need for a disposable cup.
Crafts stalls: Upcycling fabric offcuts and tshirts
Our crafts also followed our sustainable themes, upcycling t shirts intro bags and hairbands and fabric offcuts and leftovers into fabric monsters
Upcycling means the creative reuse of items that transforms left overs, by-products, waste materials, useless, or unwanted products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value. Upcycling is the opposite of downcycling, which is the other half of the recycling process. Downcycling is where the recycled material is of lower quality and functionality than the original material.
The t-shirts stall created took old and worn tshirts and upcycled them into lovely bags and hair bands. Both these projects were enjoyed by the children and got their creative juices flowing resulting in wonderful creations of bags and hair bands.
The Monster making stall used fabric, stuffing, wool and buttons that were donated and were left over from peoples sewing projects. Old (and washed!) pillows were upcycled for stuffing plus scraps from sewing projects such as fabrics and wool, and several people's Granny's button tins! Lots of lovely monsters were lovingly created over the day.
Spreading the word
From posting in social media and sharing with friend, many other local schools like Grange, Mount Carmel and Oakland's and Ealing Council have reach out to find out more about the schemes at Fielding, so hopefully the Ealing borough as a whole will be looking at how we can reduce our waste.
What is next for reducing waste?
The next mission for waste reduction is to see if we can reduce single use plastic bottles or tin cans or come up with incentives so recycling is easily separated into waste streams. The waste and recycling team did a stirling and sadly dirty job of separating the recycling from general waste after the school fair, as sadly the rubbish put into the bins were not sorted correctly.
The best solution is to stop the waste in the first place. We will be looking at buying in bulk such as kegs of beers, ciders; and soft drinks served into cups from large bottles.
Or another idea being put forward is a recycling reward stall where you get rewarded when sorting and delivering recycling to the stall. Luckily we have until December to think about this!
Wyndham Road, Ealing, London, W13 9TE