Sustainability & Garden Club

SUSTAINABILITY NEWS

Hello everyone! The end of term has approached so quickly! Term One has has been a busy term with setting up our processes for composting, building our worm farm buckets, preparing our soil, planting seedlings and learning how to care for our garden. Our vegetables have been slow growing this term and the possums have enjoyed nibbling through the nets to enjoy our silverbeet and bok choy, but our first edible Calendula flowers are blooming. We are looking forward to planting some winter vegetables at the start of Term Two. Please enjoy looking backat the photos of some of our favourite fun moments in the garden this term.

Volunteers who can gently water our vegetable garden, are very welcome on days other than the Thursday (we water on Thursday when Miss Belinda is here) - especially while our seedlings are so small. The vegetable gardens are located just outside the library, near the Prep and 1/2 classrooms. Students are welcome to use their water bottles or just ask Mrs Boffa in the office for the key to the shed to get a watering can. Our plants would really appreciated it! 

Parent Volunteers

We would love parent (or grandparent) volunteers to help us in the garden. If you are available on either an occasional or regular basis Miss Belinda would love to hear from you. Email bnechwatal@tcs.catholic.edu.au. We meet Thursdays 10.45-11.35am. Volunteers need to have a Working With Children Check, which we can advise how to get.

Nude Food - Every Thursday

And the winners are … 3/4 TR (again!) with 13 rubbish free lunches, followed by 1/2 RT with 7 and 5/6 FA with 7 rubbish free lunches. Well done! 

“Nude food” is food that comes to school without disposable packaging – extra plastic bags, paper bags, wrappings, plastic water bottles or cling wraps. Australia is the second highest producer of rubbish per person in the western world! Unfortunately school lunches are contributing to this, with the average child generating around 30 kg of rubbish a year. We can do our part to reduce this by packing a school lunch without including any extra packaging or juice packs. Make a conscious decision to only include foods that leave no packaging at the end of the day. Put the sandwich or bread roll into a named lunchbox and use small containers for any snack foods and of course, pack a reusable drink bottle. 

Some yummy ideas - a sandwich/wrap/roll, pasta with vegetables, soup, frittata or sushi, a fruit or vegetable snack, such as whole fruit, cut up veggie sticks, fruit or savoury kebab or a small salad. 

There are some great ideas here:

Healthy Lunchbox Ideas for kids. Rubbish free / nude food ideas

Wishing everyone happy and safe holidays! Thank you for your great efforts in helping us live in a way that is kinder to our environment!

The Sustainability Team - Ms Belinda, Amy and Nathan