Vision

Our vision for Canada is…
Reducing waste that enters landfills is an important part of a more sustainable Canada. The less recyclables that go into garbage, the less the amount of stress that is put onto the environment to extract resources. This means creatures in nature will not lose habitats, and ecosystems will be less touched, allowing them to become more biodiverse.
This is an important issue in our community because our local landfill is almost full. Our Environment Club visited the local recycling plant recently and we were surprised to hear that even with recent improvements, it will only last another 15 years. With a large number of students eating their lunches in the cafeteria every day, all of their waste is currently thrown in garbage bins to be taken to landfill. Putting recycling bins in the cafeteria will hopefully divert a lot of plastic bottles and other containers, cans and paper from going to landfill every day.

Action

We would like to build recycling bins for the cafeteria. The bins would be designed and built in-house by our Construction and Manufacturing Technology students and decorated by our Art students, therefore obtaining more student buy-in for their use. We will educate on school population once in place, and conduct another waste audit to see how much waste we have diverted and how much more we have to go to reach our goal of 40% diversion from the 21% our last audit showed.

Reflection & Celebration

Challenge: Finding time to keep the project moving – student and teacher leaders are busy people! (And often the most thinly stretched).