BinIt! Litter campaign
A nationwide schools’ campaign to educate and raise student awareness of littering has gotten underway and students from County Louth are doing their bit to educate the county on litter awareness.
The ‘Bin It!’ campaign is part of a nationwide litter awareness education programme and recently visited six schools in Louth.
Students from Ardee Community School, Ardee, Coláiste Lu, Seatown, Dundalk, St Vincent’s Secondary School, Dundalk, Sacred Heart Secondary School, Sunnyside, Drogheda, Our Lady’s College, Greenhills, Drogheda and St Joseph’s CBS, Newfoundwell Road, Drogheda participated in the Bin It! workshop that visited their schools.
Bin It! features an actor-led workshop visiting secondary schools across the participating local authority areas. The workshop is geared towards first year students and explores littering and social responsibility. This is the 11th year the ‘ Bin it!’ campaign has toured Ireland and to date over 45,242 students have taken part, with 6,024 attending one of the 63 workshops that ran in 2016 alone.
Chairman of the GLT, Paul Kelly said: ‘ The overall aim of the Gum Litter Taskforce campaign has always been to exact a behaviour change amongst the proportion of the public that dispose of chewing gum incorrectly. The Bin It! tour has proven to be an extremely effective, fun and interactive means of getting the important GLT gum disposal message to younger audiences. We’re seeing its effectiveness reflected not only in the attitudes and awareness research results but also in the increasing number of participants in the tour workshops.’
The workshop tour is supported by a website www.chewitbinit.com which includes games and quizzes for students, lesson plans, teachers’ notes, posters and activity cards to help integrate the theme of responsible litter disposal into the curriculum.
The 2017 ‘Bin it!’ tour will visit 26 local authority areas over a six-week period from 2nd October until 17th November 2017. The 26 participating authorities are: Dublin, Cork City and County Councils, Galway City and County Councils, Clare, Donegal, Dun-Laoghaire Rathdown, South County Dublin, Fingal, Kilkenny, Kerry, Leitrim, Limerick City and County Council, Cavan, Longford, Laois, Louth, Meath, Sligo, Roscommon, Tipperary, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford and Wicklow.