Fifty schools in Wallonia have been selected to participate in a new labelling process dubbed “Ecole plus propre” (Cleaner School).
The schools will qualify for the label after they implement an action plan, Mélanie Dussart, head of paedagogical projects at the Wallonia Plus Propre (Be WaPP) non-profit organisation said on Tuesday.
The new initiative by Be WaPP is a follow-up to the organisation’s “Big Spring Cleaning” operation in March, in which over 100,000 students and teachers from all over Wallonia took part. It is open to nursery, primary and secondary schools.
Some 225 schools applied to take part and 50 were selected, with care being taken to ensure that all five Walloon provinces were represented. Each school will receive a grant of about €1,000 for the purchase of the material needed to implement its project, which needs to meet three basic criteria: sorting, cleanliness and prevention.
"Each school is required to set up a team representative of the school community that will bear the project. In the first instance, the team will carry out an audit on the cleanliness of the school. Based on its findings, an action plan will be drawn up, and it will need to have at least one prevention action, one sorting action and one cleanliness action,” Melanie Dussart explained.
"At the end of the year, a new audit will be carried out to assess whether the situation has really improved. If the necessary conditions are met, the work done will be rewarded by the granting of the label. Even if some objectives are not met, we wish all the same to give encouragement prizes because we know that certain processes sometimes take longer," she added.
To draw up and implement its action plan, each of the 50 selected schools will be accompanied by the waste management bodies of the province where it is located.
The schools will receive guidance enabling them to work independently in three years.
The Brussels Times
