Vision

This project relates to sustainability/climate change because it will reduce food waste heading to the landfill. We will also be able to cycle nutrients from our vermicompost bins back into our school’s community gardens and butterfly garden.

Action

Within our Éco-tigres group (environmental action lunch club), we saw a need for composting in our school. At the beginning of the school year, we attempted to introduce a composting program. Students noticed that the way our program was set up was not effective and was unfortunately creating more waste and an increase in pests. As we continued the school year, composting was brought up several times by group members as to what we could do to better our methods and help reduce food waste heading to the landfill.

We reached out to another school in our school division because we had heard they are running an effective compost program. We learned a lot during this visit and feel equipped to try running a similar compost program at our school now. We now have several vermicompost bins, and our goal is to use the school’s compost to grow our vermicompost capacity.

Our school also has an existing small butterfly garden in the school yard. There are limited plants remaining in the garden and it needs some attention and care. Our students decided to improve the existing garden to increase the presence of pollinators (and hopefully butterflies!) in our school yard. We purchased perennial plants and a small fence to help protect the garden.