In Acorn House International, students need to use stationery for normal everyday school life. However, this year AHI has started to reduce our usage throughout the school. One way that we have started taking this into consideration is the plastic stationery brought from home.
Last year, our investigation focussed on folders, water bottles, and toys. However, this year we looked into a wider use of home-brought plastics adding scissors, rulers, and pens. Through a survey we discovered that most students use plastic stationery, some being reusable and some not.
The Early Years do not seem to contribute to the problem as much as the other classes in these categories.
The Elementary School has a lot of plastic stationary brought from home. Additionally, the use of plastic folders for homework packs is stalling progress and should be a focus for change this year.
In the Middle School, plastic folders are not used at all but believe us, homework is very different in Middle School!
AHI introduced a policy of bringing your own water bottle to drink from during the school day. This massively reduced our use of single use plastic cups from 45,000 to just a couple of hundred (used for popcorn at snack time).
As you can see, AHI has taken massive steps this year to reduce plastic use. There is always room for improvement, however. We need to look for more alternative stationery. Perhaps you can help us? At the end of the day it is the parents who buy their student’s stationery, have you found any alternatives?
By N. Azizi and A. Aportone