Easter Waste Audit Results Roundup

 "1.82 kg of landfill waste could be diverted to compost or soft plastic recycling maybe” Jayden

“I found a purple pencil case that i’m going to keep” Tina

“I found stickers” Nuveena We can reuse things instead of throwing away.

“Stop throwing out good pieces of paper.  Use the back of them” Ashton

“There were masks that could be washed and reused” Chanuthi

“Good food in the landfill is 86 times worse than what come out your car, but we can use it to make compost and grow food” Milo

Results Roundup:

The total amount of waste was thirteen point seven six kilograms.  Nine point zero six kilograms of this is already being composted or recycled.

Altogether there was four point seven kilograms of landfill waste and we thought that maybe one point eight two kilograms could be diverted if we recycle soft plastic, compost all food waste and try to compost paper towels.

We’re going to do another waste audit later in the year to see if our ideas make less landfill waste.

Our Easter Waste Audit

Recount of Sunnyhills Easter Waste Audit with Mrs Daniel

Yesterday, Mrs Daniel told us “Tomorrow, we will be sorting out our rubbish to see how much rubbish we make everyday” as soon as she told my class, room 1. I was so excited! Mrs Daniel gave us each a room number, others 2. I got room 5! I stepped into the classroom. “Excuse me, could I please borrow your rubbish bin for Mrs Daniel’s waste audit?” I asked.

“Sure!” replied the teacher, “Anything to help the environment!” I carried the rubbish bin into the new green room. Luckily, room 5 was just next to the green room so I didn’t need to carry the rubbish bin far. 

We collected all the bins from classrooms, offices, the staffroom and resource rooms. We don’t have any playground bins cause we take our lunch box litter home or have a litter free lunch.

Now, today we were sorting out rubbish! I enjoyed helping nature! We walked in a line to the Green room, we saw tons of rubbish everywhere: Mountains of paper, smelly rubbish, plastic containers and more… We first sorted out the biodegradable waste from the landfill bins. We weighed the waste, then took away 1.66kg because the green bin weighed that much. Green waste in landfill is bad because it makes methane gas.

The main thing is to find how much waste we made in total in a day. How much goes to landfill. How much is being composted or recycled already. We also want to check if things are in the right place and think how we could reduce our landfill waste.  

Then we sorted out the paper recycling bins, this time I helped, along with my classmates. We found some laminated paper in the recycling that should have been in the landfill bins. We were in a rush because our disco was very soon. We weighed the paper too. Using 5 bins. We found out that there was a smaller bin! We added all the paper weight and got 7.42kg. That’s a lot of paper but at least it’s being recycled.

We sorted the recycling bin waste and weighed it. Hard plastic .6 kg and cardboard .8 kg. Then we had to walk the paper and recycling all the way to the bins on the road side to be picked up today.

After the disco and morning tea, we went back to the green room. Some of the class played an online recycling game, some sorted, some weighed and some recorded what we were doing.  

We weighed the worm farm bin waste. Sorted the rest of the landfill waste into piles of paper towels, food waste, soft plastic, paper, hard plastic and other. And kept weighing and recording on the whiteboard.

The total amount of waste was thirteen point seven six kilograms. Nine point zero six kilograms of this is already being composted all recycled.

Altogether there was four point seven kilograms of landfill waste and we thought that maybe one point eight two kilograms could be diverted if we recycle soft plastic, compost all food waste and try to compost paper towels.

We’re going to do another waste audit later in the year to see if our ideas make less landfill waste.

By Grace, Indi & Ella in Room 1

 

Room Whitu's Learning Pathway

First, we GOT THINKING about our Tread Lightly experience. 

Then we EXPLORED by looking in our lunchboxes for litter. 6/19 had litterfree lunches. 4/19 had just one litter item. Plastic litter is a big problem for our oceans. Reducing the plastic we use can make a difference. 

Next, we MADE MEANING & CONNECTIONS by attending a Webinar about false killer whales. We took notes and asked questions.

Lastly, we SHARED & SHINED by writing to our favourite snack companies to ask that they make their packaging more sustainable to help the ocean creatures. I wonder if we'll get any replies ...

Hi Mrs Daniel

Room Whitu all enjoyed our Enviro Day yesterday learning about Whales and Sustainability. We loved  learning about False Killer Whales. 

Writing letters about packaging was fun and we hope that the companies that we wrote to make their packaging more biodegradable.

Have a wonderful weekend with your family,

Your Room 7 friends.

Autumn Harvest Continues

 The guavas and beans are abundant this week & Room Rua says they're yum. 

The garden fed us and then we fed the garden with worm tea. The worms are fed with our staffroom scraps. It's all about a circular economy! 

Dear Mrs Daniel,

Thank You so much for teaching me today. I really appreciate it.

Thank You so much for letting us enter the moth plant competition. I love everything that we did today, especially trying the guavas. (sorry not good spelling)

Lots of love Indigo Harding

😀

Tread Lightly Caravan & Room 18's Follow Up

 We love all the hands on activities in the Tread Lightly Caravan! 

After their visit Room Tekau ma Waru GOT THINKING and recorded everything they learnt:

- We saw bees - their eyes have lots of parts

- Rainwater is the only water that should go down the outside drain

- only female bees have a sting

- we learnt how worms are important

- how to make power and what sort of lightbulbs are sustainable - LED

- there's lots of trash in the gutters from people dropping litter and from lunchboxes

- if you put recycling in the recycling bin it can turn into fences

- trees make carbon dioxide into fresh air that we can breath

- try not to let rubbish go down the drain because it's bad for the creatures there.

- use the sun for electricity and light and warmth

- trees make house for birds like kakapo to be safe.

- turn off the lights when you're not using them

- windmills can make electricity

- look after trees because they look after us

Next Room Tekau ma Waru and some questions and wonderings:

1 Is there any trash around the school and in the drains? Fred

2 How much trash do we throw out in a year? Semith

3 Who invented plastic? Fred

4 Why do creatures eat plastic? Louisa

5 How many bins are in the school? Ali

6 Is there trash all around the world? Lydia

7 Why do kereru disperse seeds? Gracie

8 How many bins are around Auckland? Blake

9 How much rubbish did we bring to school today? Louisa

10 Why does plastic go to the ocean? Aliana

11 How many composts do we have in the school?

We EXPLORED to find some answers:

First we went around the school on a rubbish hunt to answer question tahi. We predicted that "I think we'll find two packets" said Semtih.  

"We might find old school socks" said Blake. 

"We'll find soft plastic wrappers where we eat our lunch - they might fly away" Ali predicted

"We could find plastic water bottles" Veda guessed

"I think we'll find origmani paper" predicted Fred

This is what we found ...

Making Meaning and Connections; let's think about our predictions and what we actually found ...we found way more than two packets!  We did actually find a school sock. And we did find soft plastic wrappers from lunches. We found one plastic bottle. We didn't find any origmai paper.

While we were doing this, Ms Driver gave us Pop Starch Compostable Packing from her house and we put it in the worm farm.

Pop Starch Compostable Packing

MAKING

MEANINGS AND CONNECTIONS ... are our actions helping?

8/ 22 Room 18 GEMS had litter free lunches

6/22  Room 18 GEMS had just one litter item

Lastly there were 17 litter items in the Room 18 lunchboxes altogether

SHARE AND SHINE 

- we hope we inspire more litterfree lunches for people reading the blog

- we can talk to our parents about litterfree lunches

- we're going to pick up two pieces of rubbish everyday

- we need more compostable packaging like pop starch!!

- we can write letters and ask our favourite snack companies to make compostable packaging ... or the prime minister said Blake