Sustainability & Garden Club

SUSTAINABILITY NEWS

Hello everyone! 

CERES ResourceSmart Schools - Biodiversity Audit 

Twenty four lucky Yr 3 - 6 students were chosen to take part in our Biodiversity Audit of the school today. We broke into teams to discover and record aspects such as hoe many native and non-native trees, shrubs, animals and bird life we could find within the school grounds. CERES will now help us to tally up our findings and work on how we might like to add to it to make more habitat for friendly insects and animals. Stay tuned for more details! 

Trinity is proud to be a part of CERES’ ResourceSmart Schools, an award-winning Victorian Government program that assists schools to embed sustainability in everything they do.

As part of the program, we are working towards minimising waste, saving energy and water, promoting biodiversity and taking action on climate change to benefit our school and community.

Gardening Club

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 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.

Nude Food - Every Thursday

And the winners are … 3/4 TR (again!) with 13 rubbish free lunches, followed closely by 1/2 MB  with 10 and then 5/6 FA with 10 and 1/2 RT with 7.  Well done everyone! 

“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

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