KU Children's Services
KU involved children in decision making to create plastic-free events.
Never too young for a plastic-free event
KU Children’s services developed an event’s plastic free toolkit. 104 KU services now have a guide to hold events and celebrations without single-use plastics, reaching 10,000 kids and parents from their early learning centres.
From research, we know that waste management behaviours and habits are learned during early years, therefore schools and early learning centres are a key partner when it comes to moving away from single-use plastics.
The process of developing the toolkit was quite unique, as kids were included in the consultation process for the development of toolkit making it more comprehensive. The original list of SUPs was extended and covered more items that the ones banned. Kids were given agency when realising that their own suggestions had an impact and change was made.
Due to the need to find alternatives, the purchase of second-hand reusable items vs new ones was encouraged, enabling circular economy thinking.
The nature of the 2022 sustainability partnerships enabled collaborations among the organisations between each other and not just between the EPA and themselves. KU was able to send leftover single-use plastic banned stock to the Great Plastic Rescue to be recycled instead of being thrown away into landfill.