Three schools, Chirton Primary, Lavington Secondary and St Barnabas Primary, Market Lavington won all three categories for their paper collections beating over 100 other schools across the county in the scheme run by Hills Waste.

The Waste Warrior!

At a ceremony held at the Material Recovery Facility just outside Calne, Chirton Primary received the £500 award and the Waste Warrior trophy for Most Kilograms Collected per Pupil and Overall winner. They achieved an amazing 727 kilograms collected per pupil.

Lavington Secondary School won the award for Most Paper Collected Overall, the third year in succession that they have won this. They collected 46.5 tonnes of paper.

St Barnabas Primary received the Best New School award, having only joined the scheme in May last year. They have been collecting an average 291 kilograms per month.

Altogether 165 tonnes (the equivalent of 600 small cars) of paper were diverted from landfill to be recycled, saving 2800 trees, enough energy to power a house for 82 years and enough water to flush a toilet 700,000 times.

The Headteacher of Chirton Primary said the money would be used to help buy play equipment for their playing fields, which are also used by the community who had supported them by bringing their paper to the school for recycling.

After the ceremony, the staff and pupils were given a tour of the landfill site to see what happens if rubbish is not recycled and then shown how materials for recycling are sorted and handled before being sent for processing.

The Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s Naomi Silverton, who co-ordinates the scheme, said, "By seeing how a constant stream of lorries tip rubbish into this huge hole, the children will see just how quickly our landfill sites ware filling up. They already know the importance of Reducing, Reusing and Recycling our waste - and they’re a really good example to the rest of us."

The pupils from Chirton had prepared a short presentation about why we should recycle with some collages of what can and cannot be recycled.