Council Leaders Shamed by 9 Year Old’s Recycling Idea

Lee Josephs, a 9 year old primary school student from one Primary School was beaming with joy last week when he won his class’s half-term competition. The ‘Ideas to Change the World’ competition was part of Mrs Dixon’s half term challenge, a fun competition which she runs on the last Friday before half term, every October. As part of the competition, students are challenged to come up with creative ideas that could ‘change the world’.

Whilst many of the ideas presented would no doubt change the world (who could argue with flying cars and teleporter shoes?) it was the simple idea put forward by 9 year old Lee Josephs that won his teacher’s vote.

Lee’s entry, ‘Recycling Dots’, is a simple idea that could save councils up to £120,000 in waste disposal fees each year. If the idea was transferred nationally, it could save millions.

Lee’s idea originated at home, where his mother is sometimes puzzled by which bin she should put certain items in and when asked about how he came up with the idea, he says he thought of it “because my mam sometimes puts things in the wrong recycling bin and I have to help her.”

To solve the problem, Lee thinks that every label on every product should have a coloured, round dot in the corner that is the same colour as the recycling bin it needs to go in. This, he says, will mean his mother won’t ever get confused again.

The timing of the competition couldn’t have been any better either because, just a few days ago, Enfield Council in London announced that entire truckloads of rubbish from Ponders End had to be incinerated due to contamination. In a recent statement, Enfield Council said that up to 25 per cent of the contents of recycling bins meant for cardboard, paper, tin and plastic had been “contaminated”.

Unfortunately, once waste gets to this level of contamination, according to Enfield Council at least, sorting the rubbish becomes too expensive and anti-energy-efficient because contaminated recycling waste costs the council approximately £120,000 in high landfill taxes and waste disposal costs.

Whilst the idea is perhaps ignorant of some of the factors that would influence whether or not the ‘Recycling Dots’ were possible, it’s a shocking observation from a child that asks the question of us all; if a half-term classroom competition could generate simple, effective ideas like this, imagine what we adults could do if we simply put our minds to it.