Stirling Sr. Making an Impact on Our Environment!

January 28, 2011
By Rachel Seaver, Stirling Senior Public School

I heard about the Waste Free Lunch Challenge from Veronica Ford, Earth Care Coordinator at HPEDSB. I showed one of my Grade 6 French classes the Waste Free Lunch web site and then we voted to see who would like to participate. The response was overwhelming! I sent home an information letter to parents and gave tips as to what a waste free lunch might look like. I then enlisted two of my EarthCare students from that class to do a regular day audit using a Newton weigh scale which we borrowed from the science teacher! (Yikes! I had to get a mini-lesson on converting Newtons to kilograms!).

My EarthCare students then helped label three containers for organic waste, garbage and recycling and included descriptions of what should go into each one. Each day after lunch, volunteers weighed the bags and recorded the results. They then had to sort the recycling into the appropriate containers for our custodian. The one issue my class was disappointed with was that although we sorted the organic waste from the garbage, we don't have organic waste pick-up or a compost at the school! (I had to take it to my own hope it put it in my compost.) One goal of my EarthCare students this year is to start a compost program at our school. We are very pleased with our results and I think the students are more motivated to help pack their own lunches and include as little waste as possible.

Students and staff at Stirling Sr. School were able to reduce the weight of garbage to landfill per student by 0.0562kg daily. Thanks for the opportunity to share!"