This week Eco-Teacher Anita Masters, from Mt Carmel school in Auckland, has written about the enthusiasm from all the students in learning to be more eco-conscious. We are so proud of each and everyone of them for their enthusiasm and dedication.
In 2012 we joined the Auckland Council’s WasteWise program and were awarded WasteWise status in 2014. This program mostly involved writing a School Policy on eco issues, an Action Plan indicating all the ways that we could significantly reduce the amount of rubbish we send to landfill and creating a Care Code to be displayed around the school.
We have continued to do all the items on our action plan and more over the years. Here is a little taster of things we have done:
Litterless lunches are encouraged on a daily basis but we also have special Nude Food days once or twice a year to promote the importance of trying to reduce the litter we create – children can wear green clothing instead of their uniform if they bring a totally litter free lunch.
We do an annual waste audit, back in 2012 we were sending around 19kg of waste to landfill in a typical day, now we are down to a little under 2kg being sent to landfill on a typical day in our school of approx. 300 children.
We recycle our paper after ensuring both sides have been used wherever possible. All classrooms and offices have both a waste bin and a recycling bin as well as a Paper Pig containing scrap paper that can be reused.
We also have bowls to collect staff and children’s food scraps that get fed to our 3 worm farms or put in our compost bin. The year 5 children take care of the worm farms and collect the worm tea. They then use this in their Friday afternoon gardening sessions. The Year 5 children grow their own fruit and veggies in our school garden and regularly harvest what they grow, using it to make delicious foods such as savoury scones, soup, carrot cake etc.
I run a weekly eco-club and 2 ELFs (Environmental Leaders of the Future) attend from each class for one term. We discuss all kinds of eco issues and ways that we can make a difference. We have created posters. Had ‘guest speakers’ such as one of our parents who works in Antarctica on a regular basis – he talked about the impact of global warming that he has witnessed in Antarctica. And much more.
Every couple of years we have an eco focus for our termly topic. This year we are planning to do our topic on Bees. We are hoping to have our own hive on the school grounds and are currently investigating how to go about this.
Children have participated in school trips to the recycling centre, beach clean ups, and tree planting projects.
I held a ‘design your own beeswax wrap’ competition and our junior and senior winners each had their design made up and we sold them as a fundraiser for our school.
Love Your Coast regularly visits our school to talk about the work they do and how we can help to make a difference.
We promote Plastic Free July each year and encourage our families to sign up and join in.
We took part in a competition run by Vector a few years ago and won free solar panels for our school.
And of course, in 2019 we began collecting bread tags and will continue to do so from now on. We were amazed at how many we collected over a 6 month period.
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