St John's School Newsletter

Environment & Sustainability 

News from the Garden

Each week we sell Egg Lotto tickets and sometimes there is fresh produce from our garden depending on what’s ready to harvest. Our lemons are slowly ripening so keep an eye out as they are always popular and sell very quickly! Last week we had silverbeet & lettuce for sale picked straight from the veggie garden too, delicious!

There is always our fabulous Worm Juice available to purchase. Worm Juice is the name our students have given to the liquid we collect from the worm farms which is organic liquid fertiliser. It is packed full of nutrients that gives your garden a much needed boost. Your fruit, vegetables and flowers will all appreciate a special treat of St John’s Worm Juice. Just ask Jenny in the office how much her garden loves Worm Juice! Only $2 for 2 Litres, instructions are provided.

Please ask for it if it’s not on display.

Soft Plastic Reduction Initiative

The Environment and Future Leaders conducted an audit of the different types of rubbish found in students' lunchboxes. We chose a random day and each class emptied all of their rubbish into containers. We then sorted through the containers of empty packets putting them into categories and counting how many in each category. On one day only we had 111 pieces of rubbish from 154 lunchboxes. We found that chip and lolly packets and plastic wrap made up 83% of that rubbish!

 

 

We came up with some ideas of how we could reduce some of the waste in our lunchboxes…

  • use lunch boxes with different sections for different foods so you don’t need wrappers.
  • buy your chips and biscuits in one large packet and then put them into small containers that you can bring to school. This means that you only end up with one plastic bag instead of one large and lots of small bags.
  • Buying in large quantities is often cheaper and sometimes you even get more in the pack!

          SWAP THIS ..........................FOR THIS                           Wrapper free lunch box 

    $4.50 - 114 grams              $3.35 - 175 grams           

News from the Chicken Coop

Thank you

Thanks to the Simpson and Dalton families for looking after our gorgeous feathered friends over the last couple of weekends. We heard you got lots of eggs, yum!

 

Chicken Duty Roster 

Thank you to everyone who has volunteered for chicken duty this term. The weekend roster is now full, hooray! 

If you would like to volunteer for the upcoming school holidays from Saturday, 29 June, please let me know. You will only need to pop up to visit the chickens once a day to check their water and food. It’s really easy and the kids love it! Duty families get to keep all the yummy eggs they collect. An information sheet will be provided with all the details prior to your duty. If you would like to put your name on the roster please email Mel at mkerwin@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au with your preferred dates. 

Egg Lotto 

Tickets are available to buy at any time, just bring your money into school and the Environment Leaders will help you out. We usually sell tickets in front of the school on Wednesday afternoons from 3:10-3:20pm, selling tickets to students, parents, grandparents and carers.

All the money we make is put back into buying food and other necessities for our chickens. The next Egg Lotto draw will be Monday 3 June. There will be a few dozen eggs available to win so get your winning $1 raffle ticket soon! 

 

 

Can and Bottle Recycling

We are delighted that we have been approved as a donation partner for can and bottle recycling. You can deliver your cans and bottles to the school or when you drop them at a recycling centre you can nominate St John's to receive the funds. You’re an important part of CDS Vic and our commitment to make a difference to our communities and to our environment. As an APPROVED partner we making a difference by saving many recyclable products from ending up in landfill.

 

Members of the CDS Vic network can now search for and donate to our school. Please share our ID and barcode with your family and friends and your network in order for us to begin receiving donations. 

                                                                                                                                  Your Zone ID Barcode:

                                                                                                                                           C2000010541

Thanks for your support!

The Environment Team