Life’s a Beach recently spent two wonderful days visiting the children at Merdon Junior School. Across the two days, every class took part in our Waste Less Workshop, where the children got involved in our decomposition timeline activity.
The children learned about how long different everyday household items take to decompose before placing them along a physical timeline. We talked about the different items, what happens to them when they are thrown away and, most importantly, what we can do to be more sustainable and make better choices, including the importance of recycling. The children asked lots of great questions and were very enthusiastic about finding ways to use less plastic and reduce waste.
Afterwards, each class kitted up in hi-vis vests, grabbed their litter pickers and buckets, and headed outside to give the school grounds a good clean. Merdon Junior School is working extremely hard to become a litter-free site by the new school year in 2027, so the children did a fantastic job hunting down any hidden pieces of rubbish around the playground and field.
A lot of the litter was found around the perimeter of the school, buried in hedges and bushes. The children were particularly surprised to discover that some empty coffee cups had been thrown into the school grounds! They also uncovered some very old rubbish buried at the back of the school, which appeared to have been left behind during construction work many years ago.
Across the two day visit, the 207 pupils collected a mighty 10.65 kilograms of litter, filling four bin bags!
The children were also very keen to tell us all about their school goats and how important it was to pick up any rubbish to make sure the goats didn’t accidentally eat it. Among the litter they found were Costa coffee cups, very old cans and wrappers, broken fidget toys, lots of jumpers (which were returned to their rightful owners) and plenty of snack wrappers.
We were so impressed by how hard the pupils worked and how determined they were to make a difference to their school environment. It was fantastic to see them putting what they had learned into action and taking such pride in keeping their school clean and safe for everyone, including their very important goats!
A huge well done to all 207 pupils at Merdon Junior School. We can’t wait to see how the school continues its journey towards becoming a litter-free site!
For a free educational visit from Life’s a Beach, please pop us an email via hello@lifesabeach.org 💙
