Less to Landfill - learning where our waste should go!

LATEST UPDATE... Colour Run and Family Fun Night 

All year we have been focusing on putting things in the right bin and trying to have less in the red landfill bin. 

To finish off the year we had a Family Fun Night and Colour Run event.

At this event we had an enviro stall. 

We were selling the following 'zero waste' items: 

* lunchboxes, 

* honey wraps, 

* baking jar mixes and 

* fresh veggies from the school garden, 

We also had a game where you had to sort 12 rubbish items into the correct coloured bin: 

RED - landfill - mainly broken things or things made from mixed materials like coffee cups,

YELLOW - recyclables - paper, card, drinks can and a plastic bottle,

GREEN - compostables - food scraps and napkins, 

BLUE - other items that shouldn't go in the landfill - like e waste (batteries) and soft plastic. 

If you scored 10 or higher in the game you won prizes! These were books, cookies and 2nd hand toys.

We collected ALL the rubbish from this event and had:

Total waste collected = 23.04kg (from ALL the 4 bins) 

Waste diverted from landfill = 16.68kg (everything from the yellow / green and soft plastic bin) 

Four students helped check, photograph and weigh the rubbish from this event.

The rubbish was in four different bins: landfill, recycling, soft plastic and compostable. 

 What we noticed was...

'There's a lot of coffee cups in the landfill bag' 

'Wow! We are doing a lot of recycling'

' My bag is very light (green)'

' This (soft plastic bag) looks like the lolly shop!'

To date we have now collected 168.97kg of waste since we began our records (September 2020) 

We have saved 137.79kg from being buried in the landfill. 

We thought about how we could ask food truck companies what packaging they use and ask them to investigate more environmentally friendly packaging - like more in cardboard which we can compost. We also wondered if, as we only invite out school community if it would be possible for families to bring their OWN containers and receive a discount.  

There was a LOT of recycling! 

Mainly tissues and napkins 

LOTS of coffee cups and plastic lined food containers 

Food Scrap Bins - learning and decorating

 During week 5 our whole school watched a play about the new food scrap bins.

All households in the local area have just received these so the timing was perfect! 

As well as being very funny there were some important messages too! 

Food scraps in landfill do not breakdown easily - they can take a very l-o-n-g time to decompose. 

Composting food scraps is a great way to:

>>  Reduce the growing size of the mountain of waste Auckland householders throw into landfill each week.

>> Reduce poison methane gas emissions (these come from food scraps in landfill) 

>> Create something useful from food waste - compost! 

There's a video HERE explaining further what happens to our food scraps when they are collected.

To further promote the use of food scrap bins we offered students the opportunity to enter the 

'decorate your food caddy' competition.  In addition to this, the winning entry from each class 

decorated their own class food scraps bin. 

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Garden to Table - that's a wrap!

 With a busy end of term for our departing year 6 students we finished up our Garden to Table sessions for the year in week 5.

The students picked their favourite dishes to make for the last session; herby breadsticks, chocolate  brownies and fritters. 

  

 

 

We had some fantastic feedback from our students about the programme: 

'Thanks for making gardening so easy" 

"You made cooking fun and very easy"

"YES to Garden to Table next year'

"Garden to Table is AWESOME' 

When a group of students were asked their favourite activity this year many voted for Garden to Table.

In addition to our students enjoying the sessions; we also had some wonderful feedback from our volunteers about how much they enjoying working and learning alongside the students. 

This week we did a THANK YOU morning tea for our amazing team of volunteers. This was not only a really lovely way to thank them for their support over the year but also to catch up for a chat in a more relaxed setting. We had a fantastic turnout. Each volunteer was gifted a seedling and a 'muesli bar in a jar' mix. 

We are already planning how to make the programme even bigger and better next year! 

Adopt a Park #4

 This week our Year 3 / 4 enviro students went on their final visit for the year to our adopted park - William Green Domain. 

We have grown our group and had a number of new students along which was awesome! 

We also had Levi come along again to share his knowledge and passion with us. 

rescuing the trees from the stream

 

re- planting our natives

                                                   

most bizarre rubbish found!

exploring under the tree canopy and finding A LOT of rubbish

quick rest stop!

Finding a lot of plastic bottles in the bush!

Filling up the recycle bin!

During this session we: 

- Picked up A LOT of rubbish 

- Recycled 39 bottles that we found!

- Visited and rescued the native trees we planted last term. Sadly someone had pulled some out and thrown them into the stream so we rescued them, got the stream flowing again and re planted.  

- Explored new areas of the park - including under the tree canopy! 

- Found and removed some moth pod plants

- Learnt more about native trees 

... and had FUN! 

Well done to...

* Samuel and Austin for the most bizarre rubbish found! 

* Millah, Briseis, Enoch, Tessa, Shyla, Christopher and Genesis for the sheer amount of rubbish you collected! 

We are a Silver Level EnviroSchool!

We are very excited and proud to announce we have progressed from bronze to being a Silver level EnviroSchool! 

We spent the last few weeks collecting evidence and photos and putting together some posters to present our enviro journey over the last few years - particularly this year.

We were particularly focused on how our enviro programmes had become bigger and better. 

Our major achievements being: 

* Progressing our Garden to Table programme to become a model school and have regular sales and a better established volunteer team. 

* Increasing the number of students and projects

* Continuing to reduce our waste (from 10.27kg a day (2019) to now 2.03kg per day!)

We are have lots of awesome ideas for next year too such as:

- Native garden - re establishing this.

- Creating further contacts to our local marae

- Creating more animal gardens and art areas

Garden to Table - Term 4 update

As well as our usual eating delicious kai and working in the garden, we had other exciting things happening this term;  one of them being showcasing our amazing Garden to Table programme to other schools and visitors! 

They were super impressed with our amazing chefs and gardeners and how smoothly the programme runs. 

Check out some of the delicious dishes we have made recently! 

All the recipes for term 4 can be found HERE