Northland Waste — Snell's Beach School Visit

Snells Beach School approached our Warkworth team for a visit to their new Re:Sort, as they were learning about sustainability and the environment this term. The aim was to learn all about recycling on-site, how we divert waste from landfill, and what happens to our waste when we throw it away. We were only too happy to say yes and had the pleasure of hosting just over 100 years 5 and 6's, split into two groups, for the day.

Instead of your usual education tour, we thought we would make the tour really hands-on and incorporate practical learning, like a recycling race, building a mini landfill, and deconstructing our scrap metal. Needless to say, we think the strategy was an instant hit and really brought out the big kid in all of those that were involved.

Split into three stations, the kids were able to have 40 minutes at each activity. The first stop was a recycling education station where we went through our commodity recycling and had a bit of discussion on where our recycling went to be recycled and what can and can’t go into our bins at home. The highlight of this station was a game where all that new knowledge was used running to a big bin of mixed plastics and pulling out one plastic item that CAN be recycled at the site. For those that don’t know much about plastics, this is no easy task with 7 grades of plastic to choose from. Plastics are often the most wrongly recycled item in our bins, and knowing what can and can’t be recycled is a huge step toward reducing contamination in our recycling systems.

Our second station was a site tour by local legend Rob, who knows a thing or two about recycling. We had turns pulling out wood waste and learned about how we use this product as a biofuel as opposed to landfilling. Things got hands-on with a ‘deconstruction station’ where we got to help our scrap metal into bins and deconstruct our metals for processing. Finally, the real crowd-pleaser was a ride in our trucks with our lovely drivers, who, after 70 loops of the site, were probably feeling a bit dizzy themselves!

The final stop was with our engineer Nate, who got us all busy constructing a historic landfill with no liner, and a modern, engineered landfill using real materials that are used in construction. Learning about the layers and understanding how we control the environmental impacts by hands-on practical learning was both fun and informative. Plus, we all got to get muddy with the clay liner layer seemingly being a highlight!

We think it's fair to say the kids had a great time, and we would love to offer this tour to schools within our local community as an ongoing education initiative in the future. We also got some great feedback from the head teacher of the senior school, and are hoping that in the future, we can continue this tour for our local community, and get our rangitahi excited about the industry, and our environment.

"Just wanted to pass on a huge thank you and congratulations from the team for a great experience we had today at the Re:Sort Centre. All of the teachers were really impressed and enthused by the visit, and the kids have come away with lots of questions and inspiration. In particular, seeing and being hands-on with how landfills are constructed/designed was really informative, and the recycling organising was great. Spot on with what we were hoping for! The students were buzzing afterwards. Thank you all so much for having us, for entertaining us, and for all the work that went into making the event happen for us." Kyle - Head of the Senior School

If you would like to organise an education tour of the site, we are now taking enquiries! please contact rob.lambert@northlandwaste.co.nz to find out more