The co-ordinating teacher will send the students an email, asking them  asked to find something around their or their grandparents’ house which needs mending, and which they would normally just chuck into the trash can. It can be a toy, a book, a piece of equipment which might just need to or three screws to be put in place, a gadget that might function again if it is cleaned or serviced. Most probably the children will find many more ideas than we grown ups can think of.  Whatever repair can be done by the child, naturally added by an adult at home, would be photographed or filmed. However besides the repair done at home, our handyman and IT Technician will be available at school to set up a “Repair Café” during EWWR and possibly mend, once again with the help of the child, the faulty item which would otherwise end up in the landfill. (Some of our teachers witnessed such “repair cafes” in action in Bonn, Germany a couple of years back when the school had won a “Fairtrade” competition, and so we have an idea of how they function.)

Moreover, the pupils will be encouraged during that same week to explain, through photos taken, or even showing the actual item if it is small, to their classmates what they have done.

This year we will be inverting the action, and it will be only at the end of the project that children will discover how much “invisible waste” they have managed to avoid through their action. At the end, with the help of the class teacher, having collected a list of the things that have been repaired, the students can research how much each item generates waste for its production, and celebrate their success in reducing so much waste!