On August 10th Maaike and Claire were invited to join the SCRAP team once more in teaching kids and schools to be more sustainable.
Scrap ltd is a non-for-profit company dedicated to teaching resource conservation and management to schools through a fun activity based audit run by students. There are 5 teams involved in creating an Eco-Snapshot - Water, Energy, Resource recovery (Waste), Biodiversity and Material Use and Management (MUM). The Bower has run the MUM audit in schools with the Scrap team for many years as part of our commitment to education about reuse and sustainable practices.
Kids in all groups conduct investigations, surveys and audits on their school, relative to their topic. The information they find on the day helps the SCRAP team build a picture for the school staff on their performance in terms of environmental sustainability. SCRAP collates this information, along with details given by staff and provides a number of recommendations to help the school improve future performance.
Last week we visited St-Ignatius (Regis campus), in Lane Cove. The year 6 kids split into groups to spend the day focusing on their particular environmental issue such as biodiversity, solid waste or energy.
Maaike and Claire worked with 20 pupils to discuss the importance of the 4 R's – Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We talked about the lifecycle of something as simple as paper, and why we should consider it a precious resource rather than a disposable item. We also talked about other materials and their reuse potential, and admired the class's softdrink bottle terrariums as a great example of this idea in practice.
We also talked about lunch box reuse.The boys examined their lunch boxes and thought about reducing the waste they bring into the school each day. Resuable packaging such as lunchboxes, and smaller tupperware for sandwiches or small portions of yoghurt, muesli, biccies etc eliminates gladwrap and foil waste, as well as plastic single serve packaging for chips and biscuits. Most kids had a resuable drink bottle to avoid single serve drinks like poppers.
After a talk about their own consumption, they were divided into 4 groups, each of them having a particular audit to conduct. The groups surveyed canteens, staffrooms, paper stores and other class's lunch boxes to provide a snapshot of reuse culture in the school. Later they collated their information and decide what the message is that they want to pass on to their peers at the final assembly. Snapshot kids share their information at the end of the day through video, play, rap, interpretive dance and/or poster.
The St-Ignatius kids seem particularly well-aware of the recycling issues, and were very enthusiastic about the day. They did their best to find all the information required. At the end of the day, our four groups expressed their creativity making posters on industrial discard paper from Reverse Garbage.
St-Ignatius Regis were found to be excellent at recycling paper and the kids had lots of great ideas to increase paper use. The Resource Recovery team discovered 90% of their day's 'rubbish' was in fact a recoverable resource. Energy, Water and Biodiversity groups all also reported encouraging information and many new ideas for improvement.
Ultimately a very positive day, both for the kids and for Maaike and Claire who really enjoyed the energy, involvement and creativity that the children demonstrated!
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