Carol and Kate have been busy in Inverness working with Merkinch PS, Central PS, Crown PS and Inverness High School.  Each school is showing a keen interest in trying to reduce the amount of waste they produce. Read more

Lunchtimes at Tain Royal Academy are full of drama – and the drama is full of rubbish. Pupils in the lunchtime drama group, run by teacher and writer Peter Whitely, are tackling the subjects of waste and consumption in a play titled “Pieces of String too Short to be Useful”.

The aim of the piece is to get secondary school audiences thinking about the connections between the things they consume, the waste they produce and the effect this has on landfill and on climate change.

In a series of short sketches, pupils look at typical consumer items – a mobile phone, a Tshirt, hair products – and examine why we always want more, better, newer replacements.

Peter Whitely explained “How many of our choices are truly individual, and how much are we all influenced by fashion and advertising? Under the guise of “decluttering” we can end up throwing out items which are perfectly all right, filling up landfill sites and adding to our carbon footprint in the process.” Read more

Park Pupils Challenge Waste

How much waste does our school produce? What’s in all those bins anyway? These are the questions that pupils of Invergordon’s Park Primary School set out to answer, with the aim of reducing the schools’ rubbish. Reducing, Reusing and Recycling, the 3Rs of waste, saves money and resources and helps tackle climate change, which affects us all.

With the help of Ross-shire Waste Action Network (RoWAN), school Eco Committee members gathered in 24 hours’ worth of school waste, sorted and weighed it. All pupils separated their lunch waste into cooked and uncooked food, packaging and drinks containers from school meals and packed lunches. All the bins were gathered in, as was the paper for recycling and the compostable waste which the school already collects. Read more

A wide range of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE)  can now be taken to the Highland Council recycling centres in Dingwall, Alness, and Inverness. For more information click here.

'New EU rules have come into force that require some stores selling batteries to provide in-store recycling bins.' Read more about this BBC news story. Several stores in the Highlands already have collection points in place such as Tesco and Morrisons - more details to follow. To find out more about batteries go to our A-Z guide.

So far, over 100 people have pledged to  'Slim Your Bin'. You too, can be part of the waste solution. Click here to fill in short survey and  pledge to Slim Your Bin  (takes a couple of minutes)  or click here to make a quick pledge (20secs). Alternatively, you can download a copy of the survey and pledge and return it to us or phone or text us and we’ll get back to you. Read more

Meet Gordon the Seagull.  He's the new Invergordon mascot to remind people to cut waste and 'Slim their Bin.'  A good number of households in Invergordon have already joined our Slim Your Bin campaign, pledging to reduce the amount of rubbish in their bin. You can join in too - click here to find out how.

We’ll enter all those who sign up in Invergordon into a prize draw for a £40 voucher towards a meal at a local restaurant of your choice or to spend at the Health Food Shop in Alness or at Easter Ross Organics (Ardross). Read more

South Lodge Pupils say "It's Bin Interesting!"

Invergordon's South Lodge primary pupils have taken on a new challenge: to make a major reduction in the school's waste.

Pupils from the Eco Committee, working with RoWAN, collected a day's worth of rubbish then sorted and weighed it to get a picture of what is currently thrown out by the school. The results were eye-opening: the total weight of waste on the day was 30kg, around the weight of a P1 pupil, and over the school year that adds up to almost 6 tonnes. This waste currently goes to landfill in Peterhead, a round trip of 260 miles. Read more