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.