Sustainabilty &
Gardening club

SUSTAINABILITY NEWS

Ms Belinda

Good afternoon everyone! Last week our school was chosen to do a presentation to other Primary and Secondary schools about how Trinity is looking after our world. Please welcome our Trinity representatives - Clem, Olive, James, Edith and Charlotte.

Clem and Charlotte

Good morning! Welcome to our Trinity Quiz Show.

We are …

Clem from Year 5

Lucy from Year 5

And our contestants …

I’m Olive in Year 6

I’m Edith in Yr 5

I’m James in Year 5.

CLEM

Trinity Primary School is in Richmond, in the Yarra council area.

Every year, Yarra Council collects around 6,200,000 (6 million, two hundred thousand) kgs of food waste.

CHARLOTTE

That’s a lot!

CLEM

When food is put into landfill, it breaks down, releasing methane gas.

This is a gas that contributes to making climate change.

EVERYONE

Oh no!

CHARLOTTE

Let’s hear what our team has been doing to help combat this problem!

CHARLOTTE

What was the problem you wanted to solve?

OLIVE

We wanted to cut down on our food waste.

We wanted to turn it into compost to feed worms and to make great soil to grow our vegetables.

CLEM

So what did you decide?

JAMES

Initially, we gave every class a compost bin to use. Every class had a compost monitor.

Our sustainability teacher is only at school one day per week so every Thursday she called the compost monitors. They were supposed to empty their bin and wipe it out.

CHARLOTTE

Did that work?

EDITH

No! The food rotted in the bins and got all mouldy and stinky. I found the monitors forgot to bring the bins down. No one wanted to collect the bins or to clean them because they smelled so bad. It was a chain reaction. So everyone started putting their food scraps into the classroom bins, because no one wanted to open the compost bins as they were so disgusting.

Soon, we gave up!

ENTER … (EVERYONE) THE COMPOST NINJAS! (SUPERHERO POSE)

JAMES

We decided we didn't need to rely on our Sustainability teacher to be there. We got together a team of Compost Ninjas from year five and six, and each of them had one or two buddy classes to collect the bins from. This needed to be done every day.

EDITH

So now, every day, while everyone has eating time, one of us make an announcement to remind all of the Compost Ninjas to collect all of the buckets. Each Ninja empties their buckets into one big white bin. On Thursdays, when Ms Belinda comes we empty that between our big worm farm and our smaller worm farms that are embedded into our veggie gardens.

CLEM

What has been the result?

OLIVE

Our new composting program is going really well! We have been doing this for 22 weeks now. We have collected roughly 9kg of food waste every week! That means we have already saved around 200kg of food from going into landfill!

We have been able to grow delicious vegetables and beautiful flowers.

We would like to share some photos with you! On the day, we only showed photos of us, but we have so many fantastic photos of you all enjoying our gardens this year!