However, many parents and carers, as well as teachers and students, are now focusing on reducing the impact of yearly school stationary and booklists.

We've put together a list of actions and ideas to help you reduce both the financial and environmental cost of yearly school supplies.

Stock take

Items your children already have might not look as good as they did back in January, but does this matter? Rulers, scissors and pencil cases are items which in most cases can be used year after year.

Right now, only a few weeks into term four, is a great time to have a chat with your children's school, or with your colleagues if you work at school, about the best way to plan and communicate what can be reused. This doesn't have to be onerous extra work for everyone involved. One great idea we've seen this term in a Geelong primary school is students assessing their belongings as a classroom activity focusing on sustainability.

Items can be categorized using a traffic light system – green for items still new or in good condition, red for items used up or damaged beyond repair, and yellow for items that with a little love and care can be used again the next year.

What to do next?

• Red items should be recycled if possible.
  Paper items can go in your yellow lid kerbside recycling bin, while things like pens, highlighters, head phones and calculators can be recycled elsewhere. Check our online recycling guide to find out where.
• Green can be immediately be used 'as is', the following year.
• Yellow items can be used the following year too once they have been cleaned, mended or upcycled. Examples include:
  • Rulers and scissors which have become a little grubby. These could be wiped down with a microfibre cloth and left to dry.
  • Incomplete pencil or marker sets. These can be combined to make a complete set.
  • Exercise books which are less than half used. Carefully removing used pages results in a book that is blank, but just slightly thinner. Two of these could substitute one brand new book. Or, if you want to substitute items on a one - to - one ration, we have seen parents make 'Frankenbooks', tearing out used pages, removing parts of covers and then taping them together to make one good book.

Planning ahead

When your school is finalising their list and supplier, there are some points to consider which make a big difference to how sustainable a book list is:

• Are paper products FSC certified?
• Can other, non-paper, items made from recycled materials? Many markers and highlighters contain recycled plastic content.
• Is there an option to select items that are built to last? Good quality headphones may cost more to begin with, but in the long term will often work out cheaper than low quality sets that need to be replaced every year.
• Can the items be easily recycled? Metal pencil sharpeners are more robust than their plastic counterparts and can be recycled as scrap metal when no longer needed.
• Last, but maybe most important, will families be able to manually opt out of items they don't need? Not all suppliers offer this option.

Little actions add up

You don't need to do absolutely everything on this list to make a difference, but with so many school aged children in Geelong, whatever you do will add up to make a big difference.

We would love to hear about what your school is doing to make their yearly school stationary and booklists kinder to the environment.