About SCRAP

SCRAP has a wide range of goods and services available (see Shop – which we call the Green Buys Catalogue), ranging from worms and worm farms, waste reduction and recycling to environmental auditing, energy, water and biodiversity conservation and a range of other recycled/green and fair trade products. SCRAP works with the best industry professionals and most honest producers, manufacturers and traders it can find and adds its own unique range of skills in organic waste recovery, environmental auditing and consultancy to help you and your organisation(s) become environmentally friendly.

SCRAP Ltd is a Public Company Limited by Guarantee – that means we are not listed on the stock exchange and we are non-profit. Any money we make is put back into helping schools and other non-profit community bodies improve their environmental programs and to create jobs. We are certified through the Australian Charities and Non-Profits Commission as a Charity and Deductible Gift Recipient (see adjoining menu item – Donate – for details of how you can contribute to SCRAP and receive a tax deduction).

SCRAP (School Communities Recycling All Paper) began 29 years ago when three teachers (including current Director, John Burn and Peter Carroll our Company Secretary) decided they had seen enough paper thrown out with the garbage to last a lifetime. They approached the big paper recycling companies to organise a proper system for paper recycling in schools.

Starting with just eight schools in 1991, SCRAP grew quickly, reaching 100 schools within eighteen months. By 2003, SCRAP’s membership had reached around 1500 active, recycling educational bodies including schools, colleges, child care centres and universities and over 1000 other non-profit and government bodies and businesses. By then we had spread to the ACT and assisted the establishment of a SCRAP program in Qld.

Since that time SCRAP has gone on to work with schools and communities on a wide range of projects and programs including our Water Savers program where we work with Enviroplumbers to retrofit water use by replacing old toilets with new and install water tanks connected to toilets saving up to half of all the water used in a school on average.

Then there is our Renewable Energy Program where we worked with industry partners to solar power schools and community organisations or introduced solar ventilation and LED lighting all helping to reduce Greenhouse impacts on our climate.

SCRAP’s unique and groundbreaking Sustainable Schools Program and its flagship EcoSnapshot Day brought environmental auditing across all aspects of the environment to schools from 2000 onwards showing the way on what a holistic environmental approach was all about.

The program was delivered in schools up to 2012 and since then we have worked on an updated version called ArtEcoSnap to integrate Art/Tech/&Ecology into the Snapshot approach. We are still seeking funding for the program which is likely to cost around $10,000 to deliver in any school.

Any philanthropists out there?

Over recent years we innovated again with our Fertile Grounds Program which aims to continue work done in drought proofing our fields by aerating, fertilising and using subsurface irrigation and water tanks to reduce demand for water while keeping the fields playable. As we enter more extreme drought periods there will be huge need for this if Australia is to continue educating its future generations about healthy sporting activity.

Our most recent program (2018) was the development and delivery of our Table to Table: Organic Living Skills Program with our host school – Holsworthy High. We taught the program while delivering a Community Garden within the school grounds, adjacent to the SCRAP Centre. This program continues into 2019 with the intention of teaching more students these vital skills while further improving the garden and integrating it to the community. Once a model is established we hope to disseminate to other interested schools.