Monday, 24 October 2011
Waldorf School of the Peninsula
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Students at a local school are hoping to take the motto Reduce, Reuse and Recycle to another level.
Kindergarten to Grade 8 students at the Halton Waldorf School in Burlington will be participating in a week-long challenge to reduce school lunch waste.
It is part of the Waste Free Lunch Challenge developed by the Recycling Council of Ontario in partnership with sponsors Metro and Tetra Pak.
Parents who don’t already pack zero or minimal waste lunches are asked to support the awareness campaign and contribute to teaching environmental sustainability to their children.
The one-week challenge at Waldorf School, hosted by its Grade 4 classes, will take place Oct. 14-20 to coincide with National Waste Reduction Week. However, as the Halton Waldorf school has a PD day on Oct. 21, it is starting the program this Friday (Oct. 14).
It is hoped that all of the school’s 176 K-Grade 8 students will participate.
“They’ve all been notified. A few Grade 4 students will go around to the classes to remind the students and parents,” said Barbara Frensch, a Grade 4 parent-volunteer.
GreenCart, recycling and garbage waste items will be weighed daily at the school for comparison to the pre-waste audit amounts, to be determined prior to the challenge.
“We are hoping to reduce garbage and recycling by having more families switch to reusable bottles/containers. Since we encourage healthy eating, GreenCart waste can be maintained,” said Frensch.
“I’d like to have it waste-free every day but for now we’ll do a Waste Free Wednesdays after the challenge and hopefully evetually every day.”
The school will have hall displays and bulletin boards providing waste-free updates and ideas to its students.
The school held an unannounced pre-audit weigh-in on Wednesday of this week and Frensch said the numbers will be used as a baseline against the weigh-in figures generated each day of the challenge.
The 139 student lunches on Wednesday produced 4.54 kilograms (9.8 lbs.) of GreenCart organics waste. Recycling waste was just 0.2 kgs (0.44 lbs.) while actual garbage waste was 0.34 kgs. (0.7 lbs.)
“The GreenCart (number) being higher is fine because it means they are eating fruits and vegetables. Zero waste is the best, recycling is the next best and garbage is the worst,” said Frensch.
This post was written by: Franklin Manuel
Franklin Manuel is a professional blogger, web designer and front end web developer. Follow him on Twitter
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