SO YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION ?
By Lycée les eaux claires (France) and King Christ Girl's secondary school (Ireland)Young reporters for the Environnement (YRE) from Lycée Les Eaux Claires and Christ King Girls Secondary School certainly do. Read on and be convainced. Students from two progressive schools as far apart as Grenoble, France and Cork,Ireland have been busy investigating if waste has an afterlife. The investigation team at Les Eaux Claires went out from school to examine treatment of waste by their municipality to develop a clear understanding of what happens it and so to organise an public awareness campaign in their school.
Meanwhile students at Christ King concentrated on an audit of their school's waste and developed a waste management strategy with view to educating their students to bring their " Green " idea to their community.
Students going green at Christ King girls' School
Waste turned into fertiliser
Students in a progressive Cork secondary School are going green and making their own organic fertiliser, Judging by the number of flowers planted in the gardens around Christ King Secondary School on the n1South Douglas Road, they are going to need a lot of it.
A composter was recently given to the school by the Cork County Council as part of the waste management strategy for schools in the city and county. This composter transforms organic waste into fertiliser over time.
Banana skins, orange peel, apples and other organic materials are put int the composter each day by the students. Using rubbish in this way has prompted the students to take their " green " ideas home. " I thought it was a great idea, I have suggested it at home and my Mun is interested " sait Caitriona, one of the students involved in the project.
" A host of golden daffodils "
Pupils at the school recently planted 3,000 daffodil bulbs to breathe life in the gardens of the school. We " are more interested now in the garden because we are watching these plants as they grow, " said one of the students.
Strategy
The composter isn't the only new waste management strategy adopted by the environmentally aware students. The school has recently purchased a paper shredder with money raised by students of the YRE group and already a use for the shredded paper has been found within the school. " Our company needs a soft lining for our Easter egg baskets ", said a delighted Gillian Brennan of the school Mini-Company as she removed the first full bag of shredded material from the new machine. The shredded paper may also be used for animal bedding and the pupils are still busy researching other possible uses of the waste.
Audit
Since September the YRE group has conducted an audit of the school's waste which revealed that the school community produced 65 bags of unsorted material for collection by the local authority each week.
Historical background In 1185, Philipe Auguste ordered the paving of roads to fight against the smell caused by waste.
In 14 th century, the bourgeois used wheel barrows to transport their waste outside the city.
Two centuries later, each person had to sweep and place his waste in a pile so that Municipal services could collect the rubbish.
But it was in 1884, that there was a real revolution in the collection of waste.
In fact, the head of department, Eugène Poubelle, imposed the use of a box for domestic waste from which comes the " POUBELLE "
In 1975, each county becane responsable for the elimination of household rubbish.
In 1977, the operation " verre avenir " (the future of glass) began In 1992, the objective " no waste in tips by 2002 " was introduced by a law. France put into place the collection of separated waste.
A number of other initiatives to reduce this waste were launched. Green bins were put into all 37 classroons for the collection of organic material. A tidy classroon competition for first year students was organised and is monitored daily by the YRE group, giving rise to intense competition among the 13 year olds.
" The aim of these initiatives is to prompt awareness of the environment and encourage all pupils to become actively involved in environmental issues " say teachers Carmel Dennehy and Margaret O Sullivan.
A degree of success is already evident in the reduction of weekly waste by as much as 15 bags. " There is still a long way to go " say our long suffering maintenance staff, but the greening of Christ King Secondary School is well under way.
The reincarnation of household waste in France. An example : Grenoble and its surroundings, France : the YRE group Les Eaux Claires investigated...
Grenoble goes for Green Poubelles
Had the Paris head of department, Eugene Poubelle, already imagined in 1884 what would become of the handling of domestic waste ? That's the question we too are wondering about ! !
FIRSTLY, WHAT IS HOUSEHOLD WASTE ?
By definition, it is regrouped as waste from :
- the household,
- do it yourself jobs, gardening or cars,
- cumbersome items (mattresses, TV sets...)
- the up keeping of parks and reserves
- shopkeepers (no toxics, common industrial waste)
- hospitals (except dangerous items such as syringes)
Even today, open-air rubbish tips make our landscape ugly, and are destroying our environment however European and French laws have provided a legal frame work for the treatment of such refuse.
WASTE AND THE LAW
In 1992, under pressure from the European community (laws of 15 /07/75 and 18/03/91), French authorities decided to phase our tips by the year 2002. Hence the law of 13 July 1992, which forced everybody to recycle their waste.
WHAT ABOUT US AND WASTE ?
We are one of the first departments to be equipped with waste managment facilities. We have :
- 31 intercounty waste handling structures for 429 counties (104 are independent),
- 15 treatment units (incineration n1: 9, burying : 4, composting : 3)
But, are we ready to get our hands dirty ?
We studied the results of a survey conductef by Credoc (a Research Center for studying and observing human conditions) which shows that 50 percent of French people don't sort out their rubbish regularly and efficiently.
So, what can be found in the dustbin of Grenoble inhabitants ? :
- textile s : 2 %
- metals : 6 %
- plastics : 10 %
- soil : 12 %
- dust : 15 %
- organic material : 25 %
- paper, cardboard : 30 %
In 1993, 350 000 tons of waste produced, 445 700 tons are predicted by the year 2005.
WHO DEALS WITH OUR REFUSE ?
- State services,
- DRIRE ( The Regional ministry for industry, research and the environment)
- the office for the environment and energy,
- the region (Rhône Alpes)
- the general council of the Isère region.
The METRO is an organisation which represents Grenoble and its surroundings and is officially called " Grenoble Alpes Metropole ".
THE METRO AND WASTE
On January 6th 1998, we met two delegates from this society.
The Metro inducles 23 counties with 375000 inhabitants. It is made up of three areas : the management of tn1he movement of waste, economic development and the environment. It is responsable for the treatment of waste but not collection.
A complete recycling has been put into place.
It is composed of :
- the sorting of waste int he household, waste sorting centers
- the creation of composting facilities
- the renovation of existing sites and the effective fonctionning of he incineration factory (created in 1972).
The distribution of the rubbish bins " je trie " (I sort) began in 1993 and now involves 160 000 homes.
How does household sorting work ?
Each household has two bins and must respect the different colours :
- in the green bin, we put all recyclable material : papers, cardboard, plastics and metals.
- in the grey bin, we put all non-recyclabe material : fermentable and burnable objects or sharp metallic and plastic products
These waste are collected from the home
Other waste include :
- glass in containers, presently there are 600 in the area, 750 are expected,
- everything else at the rubbish tip : currently, there are 17 of the tips.
How are they recycled ?
Since 1990, the area of Grenoble has put into place a complete recyclinng chain.
Being very curious, we began our investigations in November, On the 17th and 24 th November1997n1, we visited the Athanor site at LA TRONCHE (the waste separating centre for the area) and MURIANETTE, several dilometres from Grenoble.
Firstly, we went to the conference room and watched a video about our theme : the management of household waste in the Grenoble area.
Then, wearing security hats, we visited in the company of an engineer, the different treatment rooms. The room which struck us the most was the manuel treatment room. There, the employees, wearing a mask, stand on either side of the moving ccarpet and manualy separate plastic, papers and cardboard. Even though, this work is repetitive and carried out in difficult conditions, notably, the smell, we learned that the turn-over of personnel is virtually non-existant.
The functioning of the center is no longer a secret for us ; here are some explanations :
The name Athanor comes from the arabic : " al tannur " which signifies the furnace. In scientific terms, Athana is a slow combustion furnace. Morever its ressemblances with the "alambic " (a machine which produces alcohol) allows us to foresee the out comes of Athana and understand the origin of this name.
At Athanor, the separation process is carried out in a careful manner. So, paper and cardboard, plastic, iron and aluminuim are treated separately so that they can be used in the fabrication of new products
Some Figures For the first 9 months of 1997, in green bin 2097 tons of waste were treated, an increase of 32,7 % from 96
in grey bin more than 5397 tons of waste were treated, an increase of 25,5 % from last year
in the glass containers, 5131 tons were treated, an 11, 7% increase from 1996
1997 : in the waste management center, 1571 tons of rubbish were treated, an increase of 23,2 % from last year,
These figures represent only the Athanor centre.
Believe it or not there can be a further reincarnation !
AND WHAT ABOUT US ?
WHAT CAN WE DO ?
Our investigations have allowed us to fully understand the importn1ance waste management. Our goal is also to share our knowledge whith others -before conducting an awareness campaign in our school, students form the junior and senior high school have completed a survey which shows us what knowledge they already have on waste treatment.
Since the 31 st of October 1997, the METRO has been launching another increasing public awareness campaign called " Objective Plus " : Lets's sort our waste. We all have something to ger out of it. They also take an active part in trade faires notably in ecological ones such as " Naturassima "... and a special telephone number has been given to every resident for more information. The FRAPNA (The French Union for the Protection of the Environment) is playing an important part in primary schools providing them with ATHANOR games and performances both dealing with treatment. As for us, thanks to what we do every day about one quarter of our household refuse is recycled or given a new value according to the Athanor centre. Of course we can go on throwing things away usefully but let's start reducing the amount of it. More than 50 percent of our waste are packaging but are we conscious that we are paying twice for them, as customers when we buy them and as tax-payers for them to be recycled. In that case why don't we buy products loose every time we can. Why don't we take eco-refilings and eco-products, at least all those with a NF Environment mention or special eco-packaging sign on (eco-packaging is an organisation which collects producers's payments in order to help the towns
Protecting our environment is worth all that !
A Greener Future
In Grenoble and Cork the future looks bright. In both cities waste management strategies are being developed. In both schools environmental education has become a priority. The Y.R.E. students through their investigations understand the importance of waste management and are haapy to share this knowledge with their communities