Not really 'education' per-se, but a school related rant all the same....Bins in schools

[NomDePlume]

Having managed to vent a little spleen over the sheer amount of superfluous cr*p my DS2's school see fit to include in the 'end of year sending work home pile, on RTKM's thread, I'm now in the mood to vent a little more....

The bugbear subject of this thread is bins in schools. DS goes to a generally pretty well regarded (in our area) primary school, but I have a list of irritating niggles as long as Mr Tickle's arm... The bin issue has long bothered me, basically the kids have no bins in which to dispose of their packed lunch rubbish. This means that all their rubbish, including apple cores etc, is left in their (never properly closed) lunchboxes until home time . The result when you get the box home is horrible, particularly in the warmer weather - brown apple cores, bits of crisps stuck to dirty yogurt spoons, yogurt pots with 15% of the contents uneaten, and therefore spilling over everything....

It drives me bl*ody crackers. How much trouble would it be to put a bin in the lunch rooms ? Really ? I aske dabout this once and was told, 'but then we'd have to get the council in to empty them' - WTF ?!

Thank G he is leaving the school for good on Fri !

The bugbear subject of this thread is bins in schools

Given that kids can never seem to put the lid on a tupperware box properly, you also get the homework etc books with splashes of yogurt and crumbs on them, too.

Sorry, no idea where the last sentence of the first post came from !

At DD's school, they do have a bin in the lunch room but whether DD decides to use it that is another matter!

She used to continuosly bringing home empty yogurt pots even though she walks past the bin to go out to the playground.

Hmm, well I get this too but can't get worked up about it tbh! We do have a particularly well closing lunch box though, would that help?

There are deffo no bins there, I asked about it at a parent's evening many moons ago

The things is that he has long outgrown the twee cartonn character old fashioned type of lunch box, and the the only appropriate ones I can find are all of the tupperware variety. It just irritates me.

cartoon

I was told that they bring the rubbish home so that you can see what they have and haven't eaten. (Fair enough I spose, as long as they haven't in fact given it all away!)

weird. doesn't the kitchen have a food bin? couldn't the kids have a bin to put their rubbish in and have it taken out with the kitchen rubbish?

Ds has a cool grey one from Asda with 3 compartments, 2 on one side for water, snacks and one big one on the other for sandwiches and yoghurts and things.

Janh, that would make more sense, but it has never been the reason given to me when I ask about it.

I have the same lunch box horror Nom.

At my ds's and dd's school it's a policy not to have any bins and it's at the parents request belive it or not.

The idea is to prevent kids from throwing their lunches away so the parents can see what they've eaten.

Janh - that's what we used to say at my old school, you had to take home everything so that parents could see what children had/hadn't eaten.

It's also, I assume, because the school don't want to have to deal with the rubbish - someone would have to empty bins everyday, clean them, dispose of rubbish etc etc (extra 10 mins a day pay for a lunchtime supervisor, it all adds up on a tight budget) and over the course of a week it would probably increase the school's rubbish output enormously (do they get charged??).

I think sending it all home just makes one less thing to deal with IYFSWIM

Do you go to the same school as us!!!
Not aloud to put packed lunch rubbish in bins..diner ladies not aloud to help open packets etc!!
My ds3 wont take anything that will make a mess. Imake sure he has breakfast and a decent tea as he wont take much to school. No fruit cos the cor smells in lunch box. No yoghurt ditto!!
Can manage a chocolate biscuit and bread sticks and a drink. Dried fruit
but not much else!!!

what's the 'F' for in your IYFSWIM' ????

That was for bee3, btw

just get sick of the endless pointless rules. On a different note our head wont let class room teacher give out note for year 6 leaverd do!!! Nothing to do with school you see!!!

sorry typo - just realised it could be read as adding an expletive! Poor typing.

At my dd and ds school they too send home all contents of lunch box so you can see what has and has not been eaten. I put a small plastic sandwich bag (one of the ones that has a top that seals) in their pack up boxes so that they can put yogurt pots, apple cores, nectarine stones etc in it and therefore keep lunch box clean. It does work cos my ds is only 5 and he manages it.

we do that too feelingold - ds1 uses the bag that his sanwiches were wrapped in.

Can also reccommend a zip up lunchbox, not a tupperware

NDP - I have exactly the same bugbear about school dinner bins. Drives me made every time. Although they do have bins for "dinner" children to throw their slop into the "sandwiches" cant throw theirs in for exactly the same reason

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lol @ Bee3's typo expletive!

sorry, don't have school-age children myself, but this just sounds bonkers! If they had school dinners, you wouldn't know if they'd thrown it all away or eaten everything and their mate's too. Why is it different if they have packed lunches?

At my dd's school they have to bring the remaining contents of their lunch bag home from school so that parents can see how much they did or didn't eat.

I agree it is disgusting though.