Enviro Stall for Term 4

At the end of each term we hold an 'enviro' stall. 

Why?

* To showcase and sell 'cookie mix in a jar' - a fun and easy way to BAKE and be WRAPPER FREE! 

It also makes a great Christmas gift. 

* To enjoy some yummy home baking!

* To pick up a bargain - 2nd hand lunchbox, beeswax wrap or some fresh veggies from the garden. 

 

Everything we sold was from one of the jar mixes; 

            - Choc chip cookies

            - Gingerbread people - great this time of year!

            - Chocolate Brownies

            - AND also some herby breadsticks - a Garden to Table favourite.                     

This also uses up bread left from the recent school disco #lovefoodhatewaste 

We raised $265. We hope to put this towards an enviro trip next year. 

Water tank - the finished aquarium!

 All year 6 students who are off to Intermediate School next year have added a wonderful sea creature to our "aquarium". This is how we would love our ocean to look - teeming with life! 

Not only is this a fantastic piece of art that our students have created, it is also a great way to leave a positive mark at the end of their time at primary school and to showcase our water tank in a beautiful way! 

How many different creatures can you spot? 

Rubbish Relays!

We have been thinking about all the rubbish that has to go in the red bins. 

We played a game where we made a 'rubbish rainbow'.

We were in teams and one person had to run and grab an (old, broken) pen and put it into our red hoop.

Then the next person in our team went and grabbed a different colour pen - we arranged them to make a colourful rainbow.  There were a lot of pens! We talked about how we could reduce the amount of pens that are going in the red landfill bin. 

Afterwards we did the same relay activity but used soft plastic instead. We realised there was still quite a bit of wrappers around our school. 

The following week, we had a visitor called Penelope from Beautification Trust.   She talked to us about what should go into each bin and WHY.  

We did a really fun relay activity where we had to grab some rubbish from a bag and then run to the front and put it into the correct coloured bin; 

red for landfill

yellow for recycling

green for composting

What did we learn? 

* That tetra pak is made from plastic, metal and cardboard (and has to go into landfill or special recycling) (Mikayla)

* The paper straws are just as bad as plastic straws and can't be recycled as they are lined with plastic.  (Mahi) 

That wooden cutlery can be recycled  (Angie) 

Adopt a Park - final 2024 visit! Operation: stream clearing!

 Today we had our final visit to William Green Domain for 2024. 

We focused on the stream. Our aims were:

1. To find out more about the health of the stream by doing some tests and observing what was in there

2. To unblock the stream so the water could flow and not be blocked. 

the stream - where does it flow from and to? 

The favourite activities, by far, were seeing the eels and getting in the stream. 

Others students said... 

" I LOVED getting in the river and getting rubbish out" 

" I like wears boots and getting in the creek" 

" Pulling all those big weeds out was satisfying"

" The dragonfly was scary!" ( I thought it was very cool!) 

" I like going across the stream on the stepping stones" 

"Looking at tiny bugs in the tray was fun"

"Working out if the stream was healthy or not was interesting" 

can you spot the eel? 

rubbish that we found in the stream

 

getting in and doing the mahi!

removing lots of arum lilies - a pest plant

We conducted a number of experiments and observations to work out how healthy the stream was. 

Our findings were: 

Water temp: 20°C (fair)

Water clarity: avg of 71cm (good)

SO SMART (0=poor, 1=fair, 2=good)
smell - 1

obstruction - 1

stream bed - 0

margin/bank - 1

appearance of water - 2

rate of flow - 1

top surface - 1
overall SO SMART score: 7/14 (fair)

Macro invertebrates: found worms and damselfly larvae, note: eel spotted. (overall: fair)

pH: 7.5 (good)

Overall stream health: FAIR. 

finding interesting bugs - a damselfly larvae

all the arum lilies we removed. 

Happy Birthday Garden to Table - 15 years!

 Last week our students joined in the nationwide celebration of 15 YEARS OF GARDEN TO TABLE! 

To celebrate there was a 'longest table' challenge all around the country. 

We had:

12.8m tables (for both classes) 

Room 1: 33 students and 7 adults = 40 people eating together

Room 3: 33 students and 8 adults = 41 people eating together

Garden to Table has been a real highlight this year; many students mentioned it in their 'student voice' on their school report. They described it as one of their favourite activities. 

All recipes from this term can be found HERE.  (best opened on a laptop) 

The favourite recipes can also be found on the recipes page; see the tabs on the home page. 

Waste Audit Term 4 2024

Recently we conducted a waste audit. 

We collected all the red landfill bins from around the school and poured them into piles. 

Then we sorted the rubbish to see what should have been in the recycle bin (yellow), 

compost bin (green) or in soft plastic recycling. 

  

Things in landfill break down very slowly and produce poisonous methane gas. 

The landfills in Auckland and getting bigger and bigger every day. 

We need to try and recycle things or make them into compost instead of just burying them in the ground. 

These things should have been in the recycle bins: 

 

 

 These things should have been in the green compost bins: 

. 

 

Here are some of the things that should have been in soft plastic recycling. 

. 

.

This is some examples of things that were correctly placed into the red landfill bins: 

 

How many pens can you count? 

                              

We also checked the huge landfill bin in the car park to see what else might have been put directly in there. 

We found... 

These are just 2 of the 4 or 5 bags that were mostly full of paper towels.
We were wondering where they all came from! 

The Results! 

This data is for ALL school areas for 5 days worth of rubbish. 

* Amount that should've been composted: 1.32kg 

* Amount that should've been recycled: 1.51kg

* Amount that should've been put into soft plastic recycling:  0.41kg

* Amount that was correctly placed in the landfill bins: 3.56kg

TOTAL waste: 6.8kg for 5 days. 

Amount that was in the wrong bin: 3.24kg (48%) 

(that is NOT including all the paper towels we found afterwards) 

Positives: 

💚 This works out an average of 1.36kg a day that we are putting into the landfill bins 

- our best ever result! 

💚 We are now seeing less lunchbox wrappers in the bins compared to last time. 

💚 Some classes are now EXPERTS at recycling - Room 5/6/7/8 had only ONE recyclable 

item incorrectly placed in the landfill bin! Ka Pai! 

What Next? 

 P1. Paper Towels

Reminders to all staff & classes to put paper towels in the compost bins. 

We will also research ways to reduce the amount of paper towels we are putting into 

the landfill bin each week.

P2. Soft Plastic 

This appears to be mainly packaging from teacher resources. 

We need to come up with a plan for how we can collect this soft plastic & recycle it. 

P3. Pens 

We want to have less stationery (pens) going to landfill. 

We will research what other schools have done.

We'll make some containers for all classroom to put old broken pens (& batteries) into. 

P4. Recycling- Paper

Reminders to all staff & classes to put paper in the recycle bins.