Sustainability News

SUSTAINABILITY NEWS

Hello everyone! 

Gardening Club

Autumn sunshine bathed the garden and us in beautiful warmth as we gardened at lunch time today. We had several new gardeners come to help us and the students enjoyed introducing the different plants and giving taste tests.  Our carrot seedlings are doing well, and teaching us a lot about patience as we need to wait several weeks before we can try pulling them up to see if they are ready to eat! 

We had several enthusiastic Preps topping up the mulch around the plants, so hopefully that will help keep snails away. Students enjoyed picking bok choy, chives, silverbeet and calendula flowers, so we hope there will be some tasty additions to dinner tonight! 

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 more 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. There are also jobs that can be done at any time, for example if someone knows how to best prune a lemon tree, your experience would be very welcome. 

Nude Food - Every Thursday

And the winners are … 3/4 TR with 17 rubbish free lunches, followed closely by Prep CM with 15 - 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 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