Vision

This year our vision was to have the whole school engage in reducing waste. We wanted to work on raising awareness about the school’s bad composting and recycling habits and make some real changes to how we do things. Our goal is to have all classrooms using onsite composting and cleaning their own bins, all classrooms participating in waste free lunches (or Boomerang Lunches where whatever waste you bring in to the school you bring back home), to improve recycling collection and knowledge, and to get our gardens functioning sustainably by enlisting volunteers over the summer and installing a watering system that uses rain barrels. With portables coming in over summer break, we realized some of these plans would need to wait because our garden beds will need to move and may possibly get broken during the move

Action

Some actions we took this year were:
• We cancelled our compost pick-ups from the school division to begin composting onsite. With a combination of donations, a grant from the Lyon’s Club, and your grant, we got outdoor composting bins, teaching composting bins, red wiggler worms, and augers to turn the compost. We also purchased a watering system that will hook up to our rain barrel.
• We presented to the whole staff during a P.D. day to explain the importance of our project ask for everyone’s support.
• We went around from class to class educating the students about composting and recycling.
• We spoke to teachers during one of their staff meetings to say that composting, recycling, and waste-free lunches should not be optional and be made mandatory for all classrooms starting in September 2025. We will continue to support this by teaching students and offering our help whenever classrooms need us.
• We made a school UNESCO website so students and parents can access the info they need as well as see our progress.
• We washed and sorted unclaimed lost and found items. We put some aside for students who may need an emergency change of clothing. We also kept some to sell at our next craft sale as well as upcycled some of it to make reuseable bags and dog toys to raise money for more student UNESCO projects.
• We practiced grant writing by writing a letter to the Lyon’s Club to get further support for our project.

Reflection & Celebration

Overall this year was really productive. The students really connected with our ideas and we saw a big improvement this year especially in the younger years. We already have 5 more classrooms doing their own recycling, compost, and Boomerang lunches. We did not have to call the Aki Center to come pick up compost for us all year, that means we saved the gas and emissions that would have been used. We had several classrooms sign up to hear our presentations and make time for us to teach their students where to take their recycling and compost and where to wash their bins. Our website is up and running and already has 16 viewers. We are excited for next year to see how what we started continues to grow.

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