Advice needed please! Local bakery refusing to stop selling milkshakes in glass bottles. Now we have glass all over the playground and pitches at school!

[ziopin]

I'm a teacher in a secondary school. The local bakery, which is open before school starts, break time and lunch time is selling milkshakes in glass bottles.

Some (very silly) pupils on their way into school throw the bottles onto the yard and basketball court. There is glass everywhere, making the basketball court and the small playground out of use. There is also glass all over the cycle path, and some pupils have complained of flat tyres due to this.

We have politely asked the owner to maybe sell milkshakes in plastic bottles, but he was very pig-headed and told us he will sell whatever he wants!!

What can we do about this?

Teach your students to do what they're told? I can't see it's the owner's problem. Anyway, glass is more environmentally friendly from everyone else's point of view. I agree it's a nightmare but I can't see it's his responsibility to stop your pupils behaving like hooligans.

Contact Health & Safety? Not sure if they have powers to intervene in this sort of issue. I know that some places make the vendors responsible for any rubbish, etc. (e.g. McD's have to clear up within a certain radius of their restaurants).

Send a letter to all parents stating that any pupil caught creating this dangerous situation will be excluded. Perhaps you need a member of staff on patrol at the times when this is likely to happen.

I agree, it is his right tot sell what he wants, and the schools responsobility to control the pupils. Can you put some sort of bottle bank at the entrance for the pupils and suitable punish the offenders, eg they have to spend their break sweeping and tidying the glass.

Agree with everyone else, it's your pupil's problem and there should be consequence for criminal behaviour - get the local pcso into school for a stern assembly.

Glass is much more environmentally friendly. Get the pupils doing this to be out sweeping it up at lunchtime.

I agree that this is not the shop owner's fault or responsibility. The school should provide a bin to collect the bottles for recycling and then impose tough penalties on pupils who deliberately throw or break them. Maybe a teacher on the pavement outside school (at least for a few days), to identify the perpetrators?

It's difficult to man this area as they actually throw the bottles over the fence while they are outside the school grounds, and with staff only allocated one day duty a week this would be almost impossible.

Sorry but I think that the school is ducking the issue. You seem to be suggesting that if the pupils were chucking plastic bottles over the fence into the grounds that would be acceptable. It can't be, surely?

If you cannot rejig the morning roster to put more teachers on the pavements outside the school, then you should ask the local police to ensure that police officers or community support officers are walking past the school at the right time. The police are usually very willing to help in this sort of situation but they too will, I think, expect the school to come up with a long-term solution which doesn't pass the buck onto the shopkeeper.

I agree with the other.The school need to do more to stop this,before somebody gets hurt.
But maybe the shop could help too.How about both the school and shop coming up with a scheme.Not sure what but something like a free drink for so many bottles returned.Or the school get something for collecting the bottles.