UK’s throwaway culture: 75% of teachers say families would rather replace lost items

More than a third (36%) of UK teachers say their school has never had a single week without a parent getting in touch about a missing item, a survey conducted by My Nametags, the UK's number one children’s name sticker and iron-on name label brand, has revealed.

The study surveyed 500 UK teachers from nurseries all the way through to universities, asking about their experiences dealing with lost property. They warned that a throwaway culture is fuelling a mounting lost property crisis in UK schools, with 75% of teachers agreeing that lost items are treated as "disposable", and parents would prefer to replace rather than retrieve them. And at the end of each term, nearly a third say they have no choice but to throw away large quantities of unclaimed property.

The growing tide of unclaimed school lost property has proven to be a burden on teachers and schools, with 79% saying the volume of lost property accumulated by the end of a single school term is staggering.  More  than half of teachers claim that lost property is a bigger issue for their school than it used to be.

From Designer Goods to Escaped Pets: What Gets Left Behind

The survey also revealed the extraordinary range of items that end up in school lost property boxes. More than half of teachers (55%) have found a single shoe or boot. Four in ten have found an item of designer clothing, including branded backpacks and expensive jackets, a quarter have found phones, tablets, or laptops, and 17% have discovered high-value jewellery, including wedding rings, unclaimed.

Caption: The survey data from My Nametags revealed a wide range of items found in school lost property boxes.

Most remarkably, 2% of teachers have found a live pet or small animal, including a tortoise, a hamster, and a turtle that “made a break for it” during show and tell, which was later discovered making its home in the school pond.

“The findings from this research confirm what teachers across the UK have known for years – that lost property has quietly become a real burden on schools, and something which comes at a significant cost to families,” says Lars B. Andersen, Managing Director at My Nametags.

Environmental Impact and the Power of Labelling

“What concerns me most is the sense that lost items have become disposable. This is an alarming trend for household budgets, for the environment, and for the values we are passing on to our children. Our own previous research into the environmental cost of lost property found that school jumpers alone generate more than 7,000 tonnes of plastic waste per year in the UK, the equivalent of 455 million plastic bottles ending up in landfill.”

The survey also found that an overwhelming 89% of teachers say that the volume of lost property in their school would be halved if parents used nametags or labels on their children’s belongings. More than half (56%) say that nametags actively help lost property to be returned to its owner, however 37% reported that the majority of unusual or expensive items they find are completely unlabelled – making reuniting them with their owners near impossible.

Lars B. Andersen concludes: “Now that we’re well into the new school year, I’m confident that lost property boxes across the country are filling up. To combat this, our message is really simple – label everything. Coats, jumpers, shoes, water bottles, lunchboxes, bags. It is one of the simplest and most effective things a parent can do, for their own peace of mind, for their child, and for the teachers who would very much rather not spend their mornings sorting through a lost property box.”

Read more of the unusual accounts of lost property and full research here.