Last week our students joined in the nationwide celebration of 15 YEARS OF GARDEN TO TABLE!
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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
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.
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:
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| How many pens can you count? |
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| 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. |
We are always thinking about ways to expand our enviro programmes at school so we visited two local ENVIRO GREEN GOLD schools to get some ideas.
We went to Wakaaranga Primary School first then on to Sunnyhills Primary School.
A huge thank you to the teachers and enviro students for showing us around - you were fantastic guides.
Our TOP FIVE favourite things were ...
1) The chickens! These were such a novelty - everyone loved the idea of this!
2) The native bush walk and bird corridor at Sunnyhills,
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| bird corridor |
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| nature trail with so many native trees |
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| art made using bottle tops |
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| drain painting (one of my favourite ideas) |
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| water facts |
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| science meets art - labelling parts of a flower |
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| beautiful garden and images |
4) The bee hives
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| visiting the bee hive at Wakaaranga |
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| Lots of beautifully painted bird houses |
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| lizard lounge - love the idea of the lizard sculptures |
Earlier in the year our wonderful librarian, Susie painted our water tank to make it look more interesting and make it stand out.
We realised that many students didn't know what it was for or even really notice it so we thought we could make it more of an exciting piece of art.
Susie painted the background like the ocean so we thought we would add some sea creatures.
The year 6 leaver students were invited to leave their mark on the school by adding a sea creature.
They can return in years to come and see their work.
Each of the year 6 classes will have a turn over the next few weeks, it's looking great already!
Check here for our progress.
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 t...
