Sustainabilty

SUSTAINABILITY NEWS

Hello everyone! 

Gardening Club

Our  tomatoes are growing wildly and though all the fruit is currently green, we are excitedly waiting to see these amazing blue, yellow and red tomatoes! You might like to try growing some Fahrenheit Blue (purple/blue cherry tomatoes) or Honey Drop (beautiful golden teardrop shaped) varieties! 

Tomato Foster Carers Needed over Summer! Yum!

Our pots of tomatoes need to be taken home and watered over Summer. The reward is you will get to enjoy lots of delicious tomatoes! Foster carers need to collect a pot on the last week of school BEFORE Thursday 14th and return them to school next year. If your child has been part of Gardening Club and  would like this fun role of tomato carer, please email Ms Belinda at bnechwatal@tcs.catholic.edu.au and she will choose two lucky families.

After the huge influx of white cabbage moths laying their eggs last week, we had hundreds of bright green caterpillars munching our plants today! We had such a fun time searching and finding them all! 

Thanks to those parents who helped water our flowers during the week - they are much happier now! We need more waterers on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday next week when it will be hot so after school, if parents can encourage their child to empty a drink bittle of water on our tomatoes (in pots in front of the library) and flower garden in front of the library, that will really help our plants survive.  

Parent Volunteers

We would love parent 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 currently meet Thursadays and next year we will meet Mondays 10.45-11.35am. Volunteers need to have a Working With Children Check. There are also jobs that can be done at any time, for example if someone knows how to best prune lemon trees, your experience would be very welcome. 

We need another planter box made for our garden area. Is there anyone in the school community who has the skills to do this? Please contact Mr Rodrigues if you may be able to help.

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. There are also four new tomatoes outside the library door. 

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! 

Nude Food - Every Thursday

And the winners are … 5/6BOC with 22, 3/4MG with 16, Prep with 14, 1/2AO with 6 and 1/2MB with 4. Keep up the great efforts!

Why do we do Nude Food? 

Did you know that in Australia, the average child makes around 30 kg of rubbish a year through their school lunches? In fact, Australia is the second highest producer of rubbish per person in the western world! 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

Have a great week everyone! Thanks 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