Rural Women Grant

This week we received a cheque from farmlands and Rural Women to help us further develop our gardens and construct a compost bin.  We are very excited to know we can proceed with our plans for development now we have some funds.  Many thanks to Rural Women and Farmlands for their generous sponsorship.

Recycled magazine Xmas trees

Room 5 have been creative with old magazines by making paper Xmas trees.  The magazine pages are folded 3 times to make the shape, they are sprayed with a clear paint and sprinkled with glitter.  They looked sparkly and attractive when finished.

CLASSIFYING RUBBISH

Shelley from wastewise came to Room 4 to help us classify our rubbish. We had to identify what would go into recycling, compost, hazardous waste, paper recycling, worm farm, e-waste, reusing, recycled plastics,
and landfill.
It was quite hard to sort all the pictures into the right category and it looked bad as quite a lot went to the landfill. Some of the food scraps we would have given to the chickens, or our dogs.

Waste wise Certificate

Shelley visited the school again to present us with our certificate to celebrate the completion of our first year of participating in the Waste wise programme.  Ryan, from Room 5 accepted the certificate on behalf of the school.  Thanks Shelley for your help and guidance throughout the year.  We look forward to continuing next year. 

Sculptures using recycled materials

This year, to fit in with our waste wise goals, the sculpture challenge for calf club was to use waste materials and use them to make a garden sculpture which moved and produced sound.  There was an amazing number of imaginative creations.  From the simple to the elaborate hey used a wide variety of different materials.  Congratulations to the students who presented their works of art.  I hope they are in a garden somewhere for people to enjoy and admire.

Recycled Sculptures at Calf Club

Recycled Sculptures at Calf Club on PhotoPeach

Waste wise speech

Chloe presented her speech about Waste wise to her class.

Milk For Schools- what to do with the cartons.

Some of us have been enjoying a carton of Fonterra milk each day for a few weeks now. We have learnt that we need to dispose of the cartons properly after drinking the milk. Otherwise they create waste problems or they smell. At assembly this week we were reminded of what to do with the cartons. The message was Drink it dry, Fold it flat, Send it back. The cartons are then recycled and made into items like notebooks and roofing suitable for buildings.

Traditional waste wise practices

As part of our study of traditional customs we looked at how food was prepared in a hangi. We found that people were very waste wise, using wood as fuel for the fire, stones that were utilized over and over, and flax for serving food. There was very little waste. We tried to be as waste wise as possible. We brought our own utensils and plates from home so we didn't have disposable items. We used our lunch boxes to take home food to share with our families.

Room 6 Maori Warriors

Room 6 have been researching traditional Maori clothing. They made their own characters using waste materials and dressed them in traditional costumes.

This week we had our first Litterless Lunch challenge.  The students were encouraged to bring a rubbish free lunch box.  We were impressed that the majority of students brought a healthy lunch without any plastic that would end up in the landfill.  All students that met the criteria went into a draw which we did at our school assembly.  Room 5 student voice students, Darcy and Max presented the lucky students, Tom and Oskar  with their environmentally friendly toothbrushes that were donated to us by our Waste wise facilitator.  

Who did you vote for?

Room 5 studied all the products that were nominated for the Unpackit 2012 awards. We presented information about them and encouraged our community to vote for the best and the worst packaging. Who did you vote for?

How to make a Litterless Lunch

Litterless Lunchboxes

Room 3 have been talking about what makes a litterless lunch so they know what to do on our first litterless lunch this week.  Thay made their own lunch boxes with the sort of food they think is suitable for our litterless lunch day.

Visit from Shelley: 13th June

Shelley, our wastewise facilitator visited today to look at progress with our waste wise program. Our class programmes have included a huge variety of learning activities that have helped us to think about how we are reducing, reusing and recycling our waste.

Litterless Lunches

ABC Waste wise

Abc waste wise

View more presentations from Brendda Salt

Art from Waste Materials

Making art from waste materials on PhotoPeach

Waste Minimisation Centre

The Senior school students went to Henderson to the waste minimisation centre to see how waste is managed in the Auckland area.  We learned that we are not very good at recycling and a lot of our waste goes to the landfill instead of being reycled.  It was great to see how the staff at the centre repair bikes and lawn mowers and lots of other things and sell them instead of letting them fill up our landfills. 

Antara Visit

The Junior School visited Antara to learn about living in a sustainable way.  Mrs Lomas showed us around Antara and talked to us about all the things they do at Antara to look after our environment.  We are so lucky to have such a great resource in our local area.

Finding out about plastics

We have been researching different types of plastics to see which ones we can recycle at school.  We looked at all the different products that are made from plastics with codes between 1 and 7.  Most of our common produucts like drink bottles and milk bottles are made from code 1 and 2 plastics.  We know that glad wrap and plastic bags are not to be put in the recycle because they cause problems with the equipment at the recycle centre.  We presented all our information at a school assembly.

Wastewise Audit

In Week 3 we had a Wastewise Audit.  Shelley, our Auckland Council facilitator came with plastic containers and bags and scales and we set up  in our undercover area to see how much waste we had generated in a week.  We had saved all our food scraps, paper recycling and other waste so we could measure it.  Collecting food waste for a week in the middle of summer was not such a good idea!.  We were greeted with squirming maggots and horrible smells.  The whole school took part in the audit and we now have some figures we can use to base our future waste wise goals.

Cleaning out the worm farm

Our worm farm is alive with thousands of worms.  There were so many that when we cleaned it out some of them went into our vegetable garden with the castings. 

What are we doing at school to manage our waste?

We have a worm farm to put our left over lunch scraps in.  We also put shredded paper and cardboard in the worm farm.  Our plastic rubbish and our paper is recycled through the Council recycle scheme and is picked up once a fortnight.  The rubbish that can not be recycled goes into wheelie bins and is taken to a landfill. 

Signing the Contract

Tomarata School has signed a contract to become a waste wise school.  We have agreed to do all we can to reduce the waste we generate at school and to carry out waste wise practices.  Our Waste wise facilitator is Shelley.  She will work with the school over the next two years to help us develop policies and procedures that will help us to complete our contract.