The ClientParrs Wood High School Case Study. Parrs Wood is the largest Local Authority maintained state school in Greater Manchester and the fourth largest in the UK.
With nearly 1,900 students, 300 staff and 300 visitors a day from the local community using its facilities, the school is more like a village campus. Parrs Wood High School boasts a significant sporting community with both curricular and community events hosted after school and at weekends 360 days of the year.
With such a large and complex community, there is a necessity to ensure that high quality waste management and sanitary procedures are in place.
B&M Waste Services met with Parrs Wood High School in August 2012 to assess how we could help the school to improve its recycling and waste management programme, maximise energy efficiency and minimise costs related to waste.
The school was looking to work with a company that could provide a total waste management solution, along with innovative ideas to reduce the school’s carbon footprint.
Previously all waste was going to landfill with no recycling facilities in operation.
B&M Waste Services carried out a full audit and implemented a school-wide strategy which included:
Through its commitment to education, as well as providing first-class services, B&M Waste Services aimed to engender a cultural change which would see both students and staff embrace an environmentally friendly approach to waste.
This proved successful as the school CO2 Committee – made up of a group of eco-conscious sixth formers – helped spread the recycling message. B&M Waste Services has worked alongside the committee to educate students through presentations, posters and stickers throughout the school about the benefits of recycling. This included attending the Parrs Wood Efficiency and Recycling Convention to explain the progress that the school have made over the past few years.
B&M Waste is also working with PWHS to plant a significant number of trees on-site, offsetting the school’s carbon emissions and creating a green area for students and staff to enjoy the environment.
Parrs Wood High School’s CO2 Committee had helped to save 277 Tonnes of C02 per year through its work on energy reduction. With B&M Waste Services on board, this has added a further saving of 133 Tonnes each year. This means the school is 10 years ahead of national carbon reduction targets.
PWHS is now being used as the focus of a campaign by the Carbon Trust to encourage other schools to make similar savings.
The school’s initial recycling figures were 0% and over the course of working with B&M Waste this has continuously improved to now diverting 100% of waste from landfill.
PWHS Facilities Manager Tony Way said: “Within the last year and a half, great strides have been made to educate our students and staff about recycling and waste management as a whole. The driver for that has been the partnership which has grown successfully between the school and B&M. I would unreservedly recommend the company’s ethos and their innovative ideas which have resulted in our CO2 Committee taking control and advertising different schemes across the school to get the message across that recycling is the way forward.
“B&M is a professional company that comes to the school site on my terms; whom have the ISO accreditation along with a safety vehicle record supported by a modern energy saving fleet.”
The Government’s School Minister recently congratulated the school on being in a list of one hundred schools which have most improved in the country. In addition to this, in its most recent Ofsted inspection the school was praised for its clean and safe environment.
PWHS is now leading the way in Manchester, and as the largest secondary school in the region, they have set the bar very high for other schools to follow. Working with B&M will continue to further improve the levels of recycling they achieve.
