Low Waste School Projects

Those who are in school, at least up to a certain grade, are often required to do various activities and craft projects, the most common ones being sticking pictures of (enter a random object) in notebooks, coloured paper activities (CBSE Grades 9 and 10, and whoever has to do math lab activities, this one's for you) and random DIYs. 

Unless they are best-out-of-waste projects, these activities are often carried out in a wasteful way (and even best-out of-waste projects are sometimes wasteful. Ironic, right?), especially if the one doing it couldn't care less about crafting — often, the end result doesn't look good and the project is tossed into the bin. Think of all those craft projects that get thrown away — they all end up in the landfill. 

These activities are a lot of fun; I enjoyed them when I was younger. They can, however, be done in ways that generate much less waste in the process, and it'll be easy on our wallets too.

I'm listing out the most common supplies required for school DIYs and projects, and low-waste alternatives for them. They are tried and tested fixes, as they are from my experiences.

Cutting and Sticking Pictures:

Every time children are asked to, for instance, cut out pictures of community workers and paste them in their notebook, the printer is turned on and pictures are churned out, cut to size and pasted wherever required. In this process, printer's ink and paper are wasted. Why print fresh pictures when you already have them around the house?

• Magazines lying around at home have all the pictures you're looking for if you look hard enough. 

• This is where the old school GK workbooks you hoarded, come in handy. They're full of pictures, and mostly, each page has activities that pertain to a specific topic, like monuments, freedom fighters and whatnot. Chances are, you'll find what you need. However, I suggest this only for books which are majorly pictures, and once you've cut what you need, designate that book for picture-cutting for future projects i.e when an activity calls for pictures, look in that book first.

• If all else fails, stationery shops have paper charts on certain topics. They're really cheap and are good for these projects.

• If you can, reuse pictures. Pictures like those of Gandhiji are required frequently and can be reused if they are not stuck on too firmly.

Coloured Paper and Chart work:

Often, kids need to make charts for class or cut out shapes from coloured paper for whatever reason. There are zero-waste fixes for those too. 

• When a project calls for chart papers, there's no need to buy fresh chart papers every time. I'm pretty sure you have chart papers with one side blank. Use those for your charts.

• When I was younger, we had Math Lab activities. We had a Math Lab Record, where we cut and pasted coloured paper for various activities. We all were asked to keep 2 sheets of coloured paper specifically for this purpose. What I observed was that fresh sheets of paper were used for each activity, and the unused part (which was quite a lot) was tossed off. It irritated me no end to see this wastage, so I salvaged this paper. And I made it last. After all, we're only cutting circles and triangles — they can be cut out in such a way that less paper is wasted. I made my papers (and the ones I salvaged) last for years with this cutting method:

If you want to cut 2 triangles,
this is a less wasteful way...

than this.

• There are alternatives to coloured paper. Paper gift wrap from your last birthday bash, coloured pages from old magazines, chart papers when both sides are used up (you can cut your circles and triangles from the spaces in between)

I never bought any coloured paper for Math Lab or any such activities my whole life. All these papers I salvaged from my classroom or my existing paper stash, or are pieces of gift wrap. I don't waste the corners either.

• I made graph sheets last too. I optimised on space and reused graph sheets from past years. Most of the sheet is blank, as graphs don't take much space.

• The bulletin board decorating competitions in school use a lot of paper. Once they're taken apart, salvage that paper. Don't let it land in the trash.

Decorative materials and Sequins:

• We feel tempted to stick them on every project we do, but do we really need to? Spare the chamkis when making charts, and save them up for the DIYs or greeting cards.

• Instead of buying packets of those, collect them from wherever you find them. Throwing an old DIY away? Dismantle it and salvage all you can from it before you do. Collect old buttons and things like that to use as decorative materials. How many of you remember using pistachio shells to make flower petals? Punch shapes out of those teeny bits of paper you can't use anywhere else. Be creative.

• As for ribbons, collect them wherever you find them. If you need a specific colour, buy it by the metre, not a whole roll. If you insist on fancy borders for the charts, use washi tape or waste paper instead (cut it from another chart you're done with), or draw it on.

When the projects come home...

• If the project is useful, like paper bags, pen stands etc, use it till it falls apart.

• If it is to be thrown away, dismantle it, salvage what can be used again and then fob it off. Try to increase those kinds of materials. For instance, if any project calls for clay, use the ones that don't dry up, so they can be used over and over.

I'll sign off with another hack - my favourite from when I was young. I used to reuse the plastic covers I used to cover my textbooks. My textbooks were of the same series over the years and hence the same size, so I'd gently peel off the tape and put the cover around the book like a jacket, and tape in place. It saves time, and the planet will thank you.

Comment down below and tell me about your ideas for zero-waste school projects.