Bin It! Schools tour encourages Devon students to keep their environment litter free

The award winning drama-based education programme, Bin it!, which educates students about responsibility and litter, visited Devon recently as part of its annual nationwide tour of schools. The Bin it! tour encourages young people to work together to make a lasting change to local areas and keep their environment tidy.

Last year’s tour visited Sheffield, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Kent, London, as well as a number of other schools across the UK and Northern Ireland. In this week of the 2018 Bin It! tour, the roadshow performed at Cranbrook Education Campus, The Ilfracombe Academy, St John's International School, Braunton Academy, Torqauy Boys Grammar School.

Bin It! celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2016, and marked the occasion with its biggest ever UK tour reaching over 30,000 students in one year – the highest number ever. Bin it! is also profiled in the Litter Strategy for England, and as part of our support for the strategy, we have committed to reach a further 100,000 students across the UK by the end of 2020. We will be running an extended tour again this year to take the Bin it! message to as many pupils as possible.

Bin it! has a proven record of success, with results from a recent tour showing that 80% of students who saw the show said they would now be sure to dispose of their chewing gum in the bin. Bin it! has also won two IVCA Clarion Awards for Best Live Event and Best Printed Materials.

Developed by Mars Wrigley Confectionery, in partnership with specialist education consultancy Rapport, Bin it! is targeted at 11-13 year olds and is designed to explore the issues and impact of littering, helping students to understand why it is so important to take personal responsibility for correct litter disposal.

The Bin it! team of actors aims to engage and educate young people, encouraging pupils to make positive choices about the responsible disposal of litter in their environment and urging them to take pride in their community. Evaluation of a recent Bin it! tour showed that two-thirds of respondents said the roadshow increased their knowledge about littering.  Also, up to six weeks after the show, the number of children who said they believed that they should try to recycle more increased to 77%.

Julie Lovell, Public Affairs Senior Manager, Mars Wrigley Confectionery UK, said: “Bin it! has been an incredibly successful programme to date and we are delighted to have reached over 160,000 pupils across the UK since it began in 2006. We hope that its success will continue to grow as we reach out to even more young people, reinforcing our messages around littering and urging children to take pride in and look after their local communities and environments.”

Teacher, Bin it! 2018 said: “I want to say a huge thank you for bringing the Bin It! Roadshow to our school. It was a huge success and the students enjoyed it and took on board the very clear messages about the anti-social aspects of littering.”