Reuse, Reimagine, Relove: The Oasis Recycling Challenge

100 years ago the first red telephone boxes were introduced in England. We can all picture them, there’s probably one within a 15 minute walk from where you are now. Except in 2026, they aren’t being used in the same way as they were in 1926. They’ve been re-purposed. Gone are the phones, and instead we have community libraries, information points, defibrillator stations, sheltered ATMs, mini art galleries and the backdrop for a million tourist Instagram posts. These old things have found new life. Their look is iconic; their purpose is vast and it’s hard to picture a day that they’d no longer be a landmark in our communities. 

But why am I talking about phone boxes? Well, they’re a brilliant example of circular economy principles. They’ve been redesigned, repurposed, reused, reimagined and reloved! 

As we enter Autumn term and National Recycling Week (14-18 September), we launch our Rescue our Recyclables campaign across Oasis academies, encouraging our staff and students to recycle more and waste less. But our aims go beyond this, we are committed to being: 

Self-controlled consumers; acting responsibly regarding waste to use resources sustainably  

We are committed to evolving to a circular economy where resources are truly valued. They are sourced, produced, used, and disposed of sustainably, and as consumers, we are making conscious choices through education to achieve this. We will consider whole life-cycles, from the food we serve to the academies we build, so that efficiency is optimised, and waste avoided. 

Over summer we’ve filled gaps in bins and put signs up across academies, so now it’s all about getting those good habits in place. We’ll be sharing resources for assemblies and form time, stats specific to each community alongside a trust-wide leaderboards. We’re even setting up two student competitions – ‘Design a rubbish character’ for primaries and ‘Become a binfluencer’ for secondaries - to help boost our efforts. This year we have a recycling target of 65% across the trust and an 8% reduction in waste volumes. 

This campaign coincides with other work across Oasis to reduce waste. This term will be the first where we set printing limits for each academy to reset expectations around printing behaviours and ultimately reduce our demand for paper. We’re also starting to review our capital projects and refurbishments in relation to a more detailed environmental sustainability criteria which will, amongst other aspects, look at how we’re managing waste and adopting circular economy principles whilst fulfilling other organisation priorities.  

Just like the red telephone boxes, our academies evolve over time, not every room is being used how it was originally designed and not every lesson uses resources like it did when Oasis was first established. We must evolve our habits too, to meet the needs of our people and especially our planet.