Deloraine High School students have put combating waste at the top of their to-do lists.
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Last week a class of Sustainable Communities students did an audit on the school's bins, teacher Kim Cruwys said.
"They got stuck in with the tongs and rubber gloves to identify the number and quantities of the different sorts of rubbish," she said.
"We were really surprised by the amount of actual food stuff, so leftover food and scraps. I think we ended up with seven or eight kilograms of actual organic waste and that's just from one day."
Ms Cruwys said the food is ending up in bins and going into landfill.
"That's a lot that we could be feeding to the chickens or putting on the compost heap," she said. "We had over 40 straws and they came with Nippys containers so we're looking at the possibility of tweaking what we sell."
A lot of single-use plastics, like zip-lock bags, were also found.
"Theoretically they could be washed and taken home and reused. Now once we know what's in there we can start to think about things to create alternatives out there," she said.
More than 17 bags of rubbish were audited, which was only a small proportion of what was in the bin.
Of the 17 bags heading into landfill, the audit resulted in one bag of waste that couldn't be recycled.
The school currently spends about $500 per month on waste disposal.
During term one, the class looked at the background of climate issues, sustainability, plastic theory and also energy and school waste. During the next six months, the class will focus on recycling.
"It's also about then looking even more deeply at whether this stuff is even necessary in the first place," Ms Cruwys said. "They're trying to coordinate what we're doing with our waste streams better, but also concentrate and get people thinking about what we're doing."
There is an overarching vision for the students to understand more clearly what the issues are, which the students can then take home and into the wider community.