Mawsley CP School's pupil power

The team decided that ‘soft plastics’ would be one of their three aims this year. They have already held an assembly to the school to promote soft recycling at school and made flyers to send home to raise the profile of it with their families. They next had the idea that they wanted to help the village to recycle their soft plastics too!

The children in Mawsley's Eco team are all now recycling their soft plastic at home and have even got some family members and friends recycling it too.

They planned and delivered a whole school assembly about what soft plastics are and where you can recycle them. They have already installed two soft plastic bins at school for any soft plastics the school uses but must take this out of the village to a shop outside of Mawsley to be recycled.

Currently there is nowhere to drop off soft plastic recycling in Mawsley Village so this unfortunately can make the situation more challenging for the families of Mawsley School and wider village community as the closest drop off point is the Coop which is the other side of the A14.

Children investigated the possibility of the Mawsley One Stop providing the service and found out from their head office that as a company they are very keen to recycle soft plastics.

The ECO team found out that the One Stop already recycles its own soft plastics from deliveries but does not make the facility available to the public like other supermarkets in the Kettering area. The team decided to write persuasive letters to the manager of the One Stop to ask if he could open up his store’s soft plastic recycling to the community.

Mawsley's ECO team met with the manager on Monday morning at the One Stop and handed him their letters. He didn’t think it would be possible to accommodate their idea and initially said that he couldn’t facilitate it, however after seeing all the letters, the children giving him some very sound reasons and the proposal of providing the shop with a bin like we have at school he changed his mind and agreed!

The Team was very excited and proud of their achievements, it was so good to see their pupil power in action and seeing their voices being heard. Now Mawsley village has a place where soft plastics can be dropped off to be sent away and recycled thanks to the efforts of Mawsley CP Schools ECO team.

The bin is now in the One Stop in Mawsley Village for the community to use and encourage more soft plastic recycling which will prevent it from ending up in landfill.