What a waste!

This week we all got down and dirty while facing up to our waste problem in Rūma Ono and Tahuna.

Before we can solve a problem, we need to understand the extent of the problem.

So, we took all of our waste from our class (and food waste from another class) over two school days, dumped it all in the middle of the class and investigated, sorted and measured. 

In groups students separated our food waste into plastic packaging, metal, polystyrene, cardboard, paper and food waste categories. We measured the waste and estimated how big the problem is across 18 classes in a school year.

There were some startling findings....

+ Tahuna produces 2.25 kgs a day of plastic packaging.

+ Tahuna produces around17.1 kgs of food waste in a single day, that's around 3.5 tonnes of food waste in a school year!!

+ Tahuna produces 45 kgs of paper waste in a week... sadly we  noticed that a high proportion of this paper was not in the right bin for recycling

From this knowledge we're designing posters to encourage our students to think about reducing their waste and ensuring the right items are placed in the right bins.

From there we're developing our thinking even further into a sustainability project for the school to implement.

I wonder where this will take us next....