Sustainabilty

SUSTAINABILITY NEWS

Hello everyone! 

Gardening Club

Have you seen the huge numbers of white butterflies around lately? These are cabbage moths and have hatched in huge numbers all across Melbourne. Their green caterpillars are the exact colour of broccoli stems, so they can hide perfectly, while they munch on our broccoli and kale! 

Our tomato plants, kindly donated by Paul and Robin from Sustainable Macleod have grown so much already and have started fruiting. Paul and Robin handpicked some really interesting varieties for us, that they thought our students would especially enjoy. We are excitedly waiting to see the Fahrenheit Blue (purple/blue cherry tomatoes) and Honey Drop (beautiful golden teardrop shaped) varieties! 

You can read more about the great work Sustainable Macleod do here https://sustainablemacleod.org.au/

Our flowers planted last week have struggled this week without being watered. If parents can encourage their child to empty a drink bittle of water on the garden on days when Ms Belinda isn’t here that would really help our plants surviver the coming hot days. 

Parent Volunteers

We would love parent volunteers to help us in the garden. If you are available on either an occasional or regular basis Ms 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. 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 … 3/4TR with 21. Well done! 

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 lunch box 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