The great Greenhithe School Waste Audit

In Term 3 Miss Dryland and a team of keen wastechecking children completed a waste audit on a day's worth of rubbish from our school. The last audit was six years ago, so it was time to look at it again. 

Keen volunteers

The waste audit team with Miss Dryland

Sorting the rubbish into different types

The staffroom rubbish bin contained lots of compostable items.

Some of the items rescued from landfill

Plastic had been thrown into the paper bins!

The wastechecking team presented their findings at assembly, with photos of all the rubbish that our school could produce in only one day.

There were a few surprising results:

We seem to use a LOT of foods that come in small plastic packets.

We throw compostable items like food, and tissues, into the paper recycling bins! Ugh!

We also manage to put a lot of food into the rubbish, rather than EATING it or taking it home.

This information will help us decide what to do next about reducing our waste. For example, we are looking at adding recycling bins for plastics, rather than sending them to the landfill.

Many thanks to Miss Dryland and the waste audit team for all their hard work - and their skills at statistics and data collection.

Our school vision - by the Green Team Planners

Greenhithe School's Green Team Planners 

have been working 

on the school vision for future eco-projects.

They have created a display to show the most popular options voted for by the school.

Come in and have a look

 - the display is near the entry to the staffroom.

The key ideas are:

- Murals to show school values and creativity

- Posts or poles that signpost areas of our school

- Fruit trees

- Waste reduction through composting,

bin checking and litter patrols

- Gardens for flowers and vegetables 

- Seating around the school

brought to you by Emilie, Charlie, Angie, Eden (pictured) and Sophie and Rory.

Emilie and Angie

Charlie and Eden.
Can you see the seed above the word 'fruit trees' ?
It's a photo of a sunflower seed, grown at Greenhithe.

Greenhithe Middle School children go out for a litter free picnic

As part of our focus on 'Our community',
the Middle School children learned about how other children around New Zealand have looked after their neighbourhoods.

They then came up with the idea of
walking to Wainoni Park,
collecting litter on the way,
and having a litter-free picnic.

The children wrote letters to their parents
to invite them and ask for their help.

They even created tear-off reply slips for their parents to complete if they were able to come.

It was surprising how much litter was on the side of the road on the way there!

However, we thought the park looked quite clean.

Not a food packet in sight - we aimed to make our lunchboxes packaging-free

That pile of white bags in the front contains all the rubbish the children collected on the way to the park.

Sunflower seeds galore harvested by the Green Team

     

We have just harvested the biggest sunflowers from our garden. They were fertilised with a handful of worm compost and watered and cared for by Barrie and the children, with help from Mrs Barker. The children say:

'We think it is amazing how one seed can turn into thousands of seeds!'

They would like you to know that sunflowers are good for your health, and they can be used to make oil, 

or be added to your muesli, or fed to your guinea pig or your parrot, or your chickens.

We noticed the special pattern in each flower.

What's growing at Greenhithe? Summer garden growth

Thanks to the good quality soil in the garden beds, 

and a relatively cool and rainy summer break, 

the newest gardens in our school have survived well. 

Now that the 2014 year has started, the Green Team children will be deciding what to plant in the gaps

...and doing their usual watering, weeding, maintenance, and planning of other projects.

Many thanks to Barrie for staking the sunflowers and keeping an eye on things while the school was quiet.

'Redress' - don't throw away your old clothes - as seen in the Herald

Here's a great reason to keep wearing that favourite old shirt your mother/partner/friend 

keeps telling you to throw away because they think it is out of fashion:

Rapidly changing fashions 

lead to 

rapidly rising landfill piles of... 

not-quite-worn-out...

clothes!

See:
http://redress.com.hk/get-informed/why-fashion/

and the 'fashion mountain' at:

http://redress.com.hk/projects/exhibitions/the-3-mountain/


(Thanks to The Herald, Saturday 9 November)


At last, an excuse to NOT go clothes shopping :-)

- Mrs Barker

What to do with your old analogue (non-digital) TV? Recycle it!

Analogue televisions are about to be phased out - the digital changeover is coming.

T.V. takeback is coming to a place near you.

Visit  http://tvtakeback.govt.nz/

or check the flier distributed to Greenhithe School families

to find out where to take your T.V. for recycling.

Recycling old televisions has these benefits:

It keeps unnecessary bulk and toxic leachates (like lead-contaminated water) out of landfills.

It releases elements for re-use: e.g. aluminium, glass, steel, iron and copper. 

Not only that, but when you take your TV to recycle, 

you can nominate Greenhithe school to win 

a Samsung digital prize package.